


Three's A Crowd

by Willowe



Series: Chronological Recovery [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Foggy is so tired of dealing with things like this, Gen, dealing with the bundle of issues that is Matt Murdock, finding out Karen's secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4223001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Matt doesn’t need his enhanced senses to feel the tension in the room. Foggy is standing by the fireplace, leaning against the mantle like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. Karen is on the couch, curled up into a tiny ball, heart beating so fast that it’s a miracle she hasn’t had another panic attack. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>This really isn’t how he thought this week would go.</i>
</p><p>(Or: Everyone has issues, and no one is good at talking about them.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to _Two Can Keep A Secret_ , and I highly recommend reading that one first. If you don't want to all you really need to know is that Karen found out about Matt being Daredevil, Matt got injured, and the three are trying to deal with everything.
> 
> This story is going to be considerably longer than _Two Can Keep A Secret_. I'm estimating 5-6 chapters, probably close to 18-20k. I'll be posting new chapters every other day.

Foggy doesn’t let himself breathe a sigh of relief until Matt dozes off, head resting against the window of the train and breath fogging up the glass slightly with every exhale. Honestly Foggy doesn’t know what’s more surprising, that Matt managed to fall asleep or that he got him on the train in the first place and yet here they are, barreling out of the city and heading north where Karen is waiting for them with a car and an address for where they can stay.

It’s really a minor miracle that they made it this far at all. Matt had needed about a thousand blood transfusions once he got to the hospital, and there was a fear that his wound had gotten infected so they put him on a round of antibiotics- only to have his wound actually get infected thanks to one of those drug-resistant bacteria strains that like to linger around hospitals. _That_ had gotten him put on a different painkiller, which messed up his senses again- if the terrifyingly high fever hadn’t already done that.

Matt got so freaked out that the doctors had no choice but to sedate him, and Foggy had spent two nerve-wracking days convinced that he was going to watch his friend be taken out by a hospital bug.

Matt hadn’t died, obviously, but he’s still weak- weaker than he’d ever admit, which meant Foggy gets the joy of looking after him for the next few days. Days which will be spent _outside_ the city, much to Matt’s displeasure.

Foggy would be more sympathetic, really he would, except that Matt had never actually given him a real reason why he didn’t want to leave the city.

_“I don’t like riding trains.”_

_“It’s only two hours, and there’ll be less people on the Metro North than there are on the subway. I think you’ll live.”_

_“We have too much work to get done.”_

_“No we don’t, we don’t have any clients right now, and for once I think our firm is actually out of the negative and we can actually afford to take some time off.”_

_“But we_ can’t _afford it.”_

_“My parents know someone who has a house up there that they’re letting us stay in. Letting us borrow one of their cars, too. Only costs are the train tickets and food, and since we won’t be racking up utility bills in the city this is actually probably gonna be cheaper.”_

So Matt had conceded defeat, and grumbled as the cab drove them and their suitcases over to Grand Central. Foggy had taken both bags, which left Matt unable to hold onto his arm to guide him through the crowds, and Foggy could tell that the push of people and the rumble of the train was starting to get to him. Matt is still a bit too weak to really block out sensory input like he normally does, and what isn’t affected by his exhaustion is probably being beaten by the last of the hospital drugs working their way out of his system.

Foggy had been thankful that their train was there early, meant they could get on and find seats away from the noise of other people, some of the noise dying down once they were off the open platforms. Matt had dozed off not long after the train started moving leaving Foggy here, profoundly grateful that his friend is resting and honestly looking forward to the next week away from the city.

“We’ll be somewhere quiet soon enough,” he murmurs as he watches Matt sleep. “And you can get all the rest you need.”

And they’ll have a chance to talk, like they haven’t since Foggy found out Matt’s Daredevil-shaped secret. Foggy thinks he’s looking forward to that the most. Not that he isn’t excited about getting out of the city for the first time in forever, or that he isn’t equally pumped about having an actual break of his own, but he’s _really_ looking forward to burying the metaphorical hatchet with his friend and going back to, you know, actually being _friends_.

“Tickets?” a voice says and Foggy jumps, too lost in his own thoughts to realize that the- conductor? Is that what they’re called these days? Foggy’s train knowledge is limited to watching reruns of _Thomas and Friends_ with his younger cousins- is standing there.

“Oh! Yeah, right, sorry, sorry just hold on-” he babbles, trying not to wake Matt as he digs into his pocket and pulls out two, slightly battered but still readable, train tickets.

Several hole punches later and there are two cards sticking out of the little slot at the end of their seats, and Foggy’s not really sure what they mean but he just hopes it means they’re good to go- at least until the transfer. Or, well, he thinks there was a transfer?

Shit. He thought this would be the same as riding the subway, but there’s too much time between the stops and the voice calling out where they are is too faint, and there aren’t even any maps or signs telling him where they are each time they grind to a halt in front of a station. Foggy is left craning his neck, trying to see past Matt out the window in hopes of reading a station sign somewhere.

“I think the announcement said we’re in Valhalla,” Matt says suddenly, startling Foggy and making him jump back from where he was leaning over his friend to get a glimpse out the window. “Were we aiming for the Norse afterlife, or did the train take a wrong turn somewhere?”

“Funny, Murdock,” Foggy says, swatting at Matt’s leg and digging the small map out of his pocket. “Yes, Valhalla is an actual station on this line, and yes we’re on the right train. Not like you’d know, Mr. I’m Gonna Fall Asleep Immediately and Leave My Friend to Fend For Himself.”

Matt laughs, a genuine sound that startles Foggy and makes him grin, his chest tight from pure happiness because this? This is how things should be all the time. “Thought that was how this was gonna go,” Matt says around a yawn as he stretches as much as he can, given how cramped they are in their seats. “I rest, and you…” He waves a hand, as if that’s supposed to be enough to finish that sentence for him.

“And I what? C’mon, Murdock, don’t hold back now!” Foggy teases. “That hand gesture wasn’t quite as informative as you think it was but that’s okay, I’ll forgive you because it’s not like you could’ve seen it’s ineffectiveness.”

Matt chuckles slightly and shoves at Foggy, lighter than he normally would have but Foggy doesn’t call him out on it. “Idiot,” he says, and Foggy can hear the fondness in his voice. He’s missed that sound, over the last few weeks. “The hand wave was nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting out that this easily! C’mon man, now you _have_ to tell me! What does the great Matt Murdock think I’m gonna be doing?”

“Mothering me?” Matt responds, the corners of his mouth quirking up in a faint smile. It’s a familiar joke between them, but there’s a tension to it this time that makes Foggy’s hesitate to answer immediately, and the longer the silence lasts the more Matt’s smile fades. “Sorry, that was a joke. A bad joke, but I didn’t mean-”

“It’s fine.” Shit, that came out harsher than he intended. “Sorry Matt,” he says, scrubbing his face with one hand. They’re still on the fucking train and he’s already messing this up. “’s not the first time you’ve joked about that. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, but usually you don’t freak out on me.” Matt’s voice is quiet and he sounds closed-off, like he’s already mentally beating himself up, and Foggy will be damned if he lets him do that.

Foggy shrugs. “I just shr- Damnit. This is what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not following.”

“We joke about me mothering you all the time, and it’s never bothered me before because you said that you didn’t mind the help. Not from me, at least,” Foggy tries to explain.

“And I don’t,” Matt interrupts. “You never treated me like I was broken- like I _couldn’t_ do things on my own, like other people did.”

Foggy tries to keep his frustration under control, tells himself that he can’t get annoyed at Matt for not getting his point if he doesn’t ever actually explain it. “But you don’t need me to do any of that for you at all, do you?”

More silence, and Foggy thinks he can understand why Matt thought that not talking about this was the way to go because talking is proving to be surprisingly harder than he thought it would be. He’s acutely aware of how everything he says could upset Matt, could make the tenuous situation between them worse, and it leaves him fumbling over words and hoping that Matt doesn’t take things the wrong way.

Then Matt exhales, a soft _huff_ that Foggy realizes a split-second later was a sound of amusement. “Foggy, I’m still blind,” he says, and he’s smiling again. That’s a good sign. “Yeah, I can see when you move- _if_ I’m focusing on you, and not on something else. And I don’t always need to hold onto you when we’re walking, but when we’re in a crowd of people it’s easier to do that than try to take the energy to pick out individual people. And if it’s icy outside? Forget about it, my senses are shit at detecting ice. It’s why I use the cane all the time too. It’s just easier.”

A knot of anxiety unfurls in Foggy’s chest. “So you don’t mind if I…?”

“I don’t mind at all,” Matt says firmly. “It’s… It’s comforting, knowing that you have my back. That I don’t need to try to focus on all the little things in the world, because you can tell me where they are. That I can worry about blocking out the background noises of the city instead, and focusing on cases, and doing a thousand other things besides needing to worry about if I’m missing non-verbal cues from people.”

Foggy laughs, a sound that’s pure relief and judging by the smile on Matt’s face he picks up on that. “Well that’s- that’s good, that’s _great_. Matt don’t panic but I’m about to hug you…”

Matt joins in his laughter as Foggy envelopes him in a warm hug, one that lasts probably a little too long but, god, he doesn’t remember the last time he hugged Matt like this.

He’s pretty sure they’re getting stares from some of their fellow travelers.

He’s also pretty sure that he doesn’t care.

_“Now arriving at Southeast station, all passengers must leave to transfer trains. Now arrive at Southeast station…”_

“I think that’s our cue,” Matt says, pushing Foggy back and standing up. He’s a little woozy on his feet, especially with the train still grinding to a halt, but he grabs onto the back of the seats in front of them before he can fall and lets Foggy help him move out into the aisle of the train.

Navigating on and off trains was tricky, especially with Foggy carrying both of their bags and Matt just unsteady enough that the gap is a real concern for them, but the manage to make it off the one train and on to the second without any mishaps. “I think it’s about another hour until we get there,” Foggy says once they’re settled in their seats and the train is underway. “You should try to get some rest, you only left the hospital yesterday.”

“Yes, Mother,” Matt quips, and this time Foggy laughs at the joke, like he always did in the past.

“Smart-ass,” Foggy counters.

They were going to be alright.

XXXXX

The train station is quiet when they disembark, only a small handful of people getting off with them. Matt stumbles as he steps off the train, Foggy luckily there to catch him, and he sticks close to Foggy’s side after that, closer than he would have in the crowds of Hell’s Kitchen. Foggy frowns but figures hey, it’s cold and Matt still looks exhausted and there’s nothing in the world that could get him to push his friend away now.

Karen had come up early, to scout out the area and buy groceries before Foggy and Matt arrived, but she isn’t at the train station when they get there and they wait on the station for several long minutes, shivering in the cold dusk and resisting the urge to check the time every few minutes. It’s near-silent, no bugs flying around at this time of year, only the occasional distant car and the sound of animals scurrying in the forest beyond.

“’s nice, isn’t it?” Foggy says out of the blue. “How quiet, it is. It’d never get this quiet in the city.”

“Yeah. Nice,” Matt echoes, with way less enthusiasm.

Foggy frowns down at his friend, wondering if maybe Matt is more tired than he originally thought, but they’re startled by the honk of a car horn before he can say anything. Karen is leaning out the window of her borrowed car, waving at them and laughing at the obviously startled looks on their faces. “You boys going my way?” she teases, as Foggy grabs their bags and Matt heads straight for the car.

“As long as your way involves food and a warm house, I’m game,” Matt says as he slides into the back seat.

“Dinner’s in the oven and I already cranked the heat up,” Karen assures him as Foggy climbs into the passenger’s seat and they pull out of the train station. “Foggy, tell your parents to thank this friend for letting us borrow his house while he’s on vacation because this place is seriously sweet. Quiet neighborhood, big house- and oh my god, there’s a _hot tub_ out back…”

Foggy laughs, her enthusiasm buoying his spirits and making him even happier that they decided to take this break. “Well, we’ll see it soon enough and be able to pass judgement for ourselves,” Foggy says. “Or rather, I’ll see it and Matt will sonar it and- hey, Matt? Is sonar the right verb to use?”

There’s no response from the back seat and Foggy twists around, craning his neck to look back. Matt has dozed off again, head lolled back against the head rest in what looked like an uncomfortable position.

“He asleep?” Karen asks, glancing up in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah. He slept for most of the train ride, too.” Foggy pauses for a moment and then adds, “We talked, for a bit. While he was awake.”

“Really? Thought you guys talked while he was still sleeping,” Karen jokes.

Foggy laughs. “You’re lucky you’re driving, Ms. Page, so I can’t throw something at you for that poor excuse of a joke,” he says. “And since you won’t ask, our conversation went well. I have a good feeling about this week, I really do.”

He turns around again, nudging Matt’s leg- the only part of his friend he could reach- and saying, “C’mon, Matt. You’ll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that again, and then you’ll be grumpy for the rest of the night and then Karen will have to deal with that, and that’s really not fair for her now is it?”

Matt groans and shoves Foggy’s hand away. “You’re unbearable. Literally insufferable. Remind me why we’re friends again?”

 _Friends_. Foggy can’t stop the wide grin from splitting his face and out of the corner of his eye he sees Karen glance his way with a smaller smile of her own. He doesn’t say anything to Matt though, just responds with, “Because no one else has parents who know people who have a house outside the city with a hot tub. A _hot tub_ , Matt! When was the last time you were in a hot tub?”

“Spring break, that year we went to Jersey,” Matt answers, pushing himself upright and wincing as the movement pulled on his stitches. “With the little motel we could barely afford and the-”

“The sorority girls, yeah I remember!” Foggy says with a loud laugh. “Man, that was a disaster I had successfully blocked from my memory.”

“Why, what happened?” Karen asks, with way too much curiosity for her own good.

“Nope! You are not getting this story out of us,” Foggy says quickly, before Matt can start rehashing the embarrassing moments of their youth. “So not to completely change the subject, although admittedly that may be a goal of mine, how far out are we from this lovely mansion you described?”

“Smooth, Foggy,” Matt mutters with a chuckle.

Karen has a smile on her face that Foggy knows means that she’ll get back to their ill-fated college adventures later. “It’s hardly a mansion, Foggy, don’t get your hopes up too much. And we’re… five minutes out? Maybe ten? We’re just coming up on the town now- it’s small, there’s not much out here…”

“Let’s see… Houses, more houses- oh Matt, there’s a Catholic church, your favorite place in the world!” Foggy narrates the surprisingly brief drive through the town- one gas station, small grocery store, a variety of little shops that he knows none of them can afford to shop in. “Is that everything? Is that seriously everything?” Foggy asks, crowding against the window and staring out as if five more blocks of shops will magically appear before his eyes. “Matt, there’s practically nothing here!”

“Yeah, I got that for myself,” Matt says. His voice is tight, his face pinched, and Foggy twists back around to stare at him worryingly.

“You okay, buddy? I know you don’t like them, but we do have those pain killers the hospital gave us if you need one…”

“I’m not in pain, Foggy,” Matt says. He’s facing the window, and Foggy wonders how much of the outside world he can sense when he’s in a moving vehicle. “I’m not used to it being this quiet,” he continues, his voice just a little softer. “I can’t decide if it’s relaxing, or unnerving.”

“Unnerving?” Karen echoes.

“It’s hard to get an idea of what’s around me if there’s nothing to hear.”

Foggy and Karen exchange uneasy looks, both quietly wondering if maybe this wasn’t as good of an idea as they originally thought. “Do you use your hearing the most, to figure out where things are?” Karen asks hesitantly.

Matt shrugs. “It’s one of the easier senses. Everything makes noise, if you know what to listen for. Footsteps, breathing, heartbeats… A breeze rocking a sign or flapping in someone’s jacket- even the absence of noise is a clue, like when wind gets blocked by a building but you can still hear it blowing somewhere else. And electrical things, do you know how much noise those make? The ticking of a watch or clock, the sound of someone tapping at a phone screen, the hum of lights and laptops or the crackle of police radios four blocks away…”

“And you hear all of that, every day?” Karen asks incredulously, glancing over at Foggy in open shock.

“Well… yeah,” Matt says. “All of that, and then some. I mean, I can block it out at this point but it’s still there. Plus everything I smell or taste, and things I can feel- physical things, but also temperature variations, pressure changes, things like that. It’s how I’m able to do everything I can do.”

“How does that not drive you crazy, dealing with all of that all the time?” Karen asks. She turns down a long driveway, and Foggy can see the lights of houses in the distance.

“It did, at first,” Matt says, and then rather than elaborating on that little piece of information he continues with, “The car slowed down. Are we there?”

“Yes we are,” Karen says as she pulls into the driveway of a moderate-sized house. She tosses the keys to Foggy as they climb out of the car. “Go look over the house. I’ll grab the bags.”

The outside light helps Foggy find his way up the front steps, Matt holding onto his arm with one hand with his cane in the other. The house is warmer and more inviting than Foggy had pictured, and the entire downstairs smells like whatever Karen has in the over. “So Murdock, what are we having for dinner?”

Matt laughs, but sniffs the air anyway. “Shepherd’s pie,” he says after a few seconds. “Smells good too.”

“Karen!” Foggy calls out the front door. “Is he right?”

Karen is laughing as she nudges him out of her way, setting their bags down on the floor and closing the door behind her. “Of course he is,” she says. “My cooking is _always_ good.”

Matt lets out another bark of laughter. Foggy thinks he hasn’t seen him this light-hearted in years. “Well you haven’t let us down yet,” Matt says. “So, tour of the house first? And then we’ll dig into Karen’s delicious shepherd’s pie.”

“Excellent plan, Mr. Murdock!” Foggy says enthusiastically. “Come, let us explore our palatial abode!”

Karen had already claimed the smaller bedroom on the second floor, leaving what could only be the master bedroom for Foggy and Matt to share. “I’ll take the blow-up mattress,” Foggy says before Matt can try to take it for himself.

“Foggy, you hate sleeping on air mattresses,” Matt says. “I’ll sleep on the floor. You take the bed.”

“Not happening Matty, you’re just coming out of a hospital stay and I am not,” Foggy says. “You aren’t winning this one, so don’t even try.”

Matt just _hmms_ , in that way that means he’s not really conceding defeat even if it looks like he is. Foggy makes a mental note to never let Matt go to sleep before him, or else he’ll find his friend curled up on the air mattress anyway. “Seems like a nice place,” he says instead, turning slowly around to get a more complete sense of the room. “I was afraid it would be all… modern. You know, glass and steel, that sort of thing. They mess with my senses, but this is- this is nice. Still too quiet, but it’s nice.”

“Glass and steel mess with your super-senses?” Foggy asks. He wonders just how much of a hell Landman & Zach had been for Matt, makes a mental note to ask him about that later. “You know, you’re being surprisingly forthcoming with all this stuff.”

Matt shrugs. “This stuff is easy. It’s all… physical stuff, what I can do, what I can’t do. Figure we should get this out of the way now, because everything else will be harder.”

“Everything else?” Foggy echoes.

“Your issues with what I do,” Matt says. “And my issues, in general. And… Karen’s issues.”

“Karen’s issues?” Foggy feels like he’s becoming a broken record. “What, are we trying to fix everything in our lives in less than a week?”

“She’s hiding something, Foggy, she has been for a while,” Matt says. “And no matter what she says, it’s not getting better, no matter how much time we put between us and everything with Fisk.”

“People are allowed secrets, Matt.”

Matt’s mouth twists up into a bitter smile. “Yeah. Of course they are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to add a note about why they aren't in NYC, because I know in some fandoms it's frowned-upon to move characters around like this. Like Foggy said at the end of the last story, if Matt has excuses for putting off conversations and confrontations he would. He'll claim that they're too busy at work, or there's a chance of them being overheard, or he'll just avoid them by doing Daredevil stuff every night instead of sitting down with them to talk. Move him out of the city and you get rid of those excuses. I also wanted to go with slighty-injured!Matt for this story, not severe enough that he'd stop if he was in NYC but enough to justify Foggy and Karen wanting him to get somewhere to relax. 
> 
> And finally, I like the idea of Matt having to explain his abilities not by what he's doing on a day-to-day basis in the city, but by what he can't do now that he's out of the city. Instead of a confrontation like we see in "Nelson v. Murdock", where Foggy is just having information thrown at him, I want to explore Foggy and Karen actually seeing first-hand how much Matt relies on his senses and what he is and is not capable of doing with them- and having to face the reality that what they think is best for Matt is not necessarily what's actually best for him.
> 
> I hope this is a dynamic and setting that others will find interesting. Please let me know what you think of it!


	2. Chapter 2

Karen wakes up first the following morning. Or more accurately, Karen is the first one to venture into the kitchen and try to figure out how to work the ridiculously hi-tech coffee maker hidden in the corner by the fridge. She’s been awake for a couple hours already, nightmares not fading even weeks after… after…

No. Focus on something else. Open the cupboard, pull down the tin of coffee. It’s the stuff she bought yesterday, not the expensive brand she found in the pantry when she first arrived. Foggy will probably hate it, but then again he did say that her coffee was growing on him. “My long day at Nelson & Murdock hasn’t truly begun until I drink that first cup of your finest brew,” he had said the other morning. Karen thinks he was being sincere or at least, she hopes he was.

The coffee maker sputters to life under her less-than-gentle ministrations. She pulls down a mug for herself; after a moment’s thought, she pulls down two more mugs and leaves them sitting on the counter, next to the two spoons that she sits out as well. Powdered creamer and sugar both get left next to the coffee maker as well, milk goes in the fridge door in almost the same spot as in their little mini-fridge in the office.

Matt will take his coffee with milk, but no sugar and definitely no artificial creamer. She wonders now if the chemical undertones in the creamer taste worse to him than they do to her, which would be saying something because she can't stand the stuff. Foggy takes his coffee with sugar and milk, and a little bit of creamer “for that extra vanilla flavor, Karen! Why are you making that face, it’s delicious!”

Karen tells herself that it makes sense for her to know this, given how often she grabs coffee for them during the day. But that doesn’t explain the warmth in her chest when she sees Matt smile after taking that first sip of coffee in the morning.

(Foggy, she thinks, will take a couple weeks before he actually smiles at her coffee. But she remembers when he said that it was growing on him, and she finds herself happily looking forward to that first day that he appreciates her efforts for the way they taste, not merely for the gesture.)

She pours herself a cup of coffee (sugar, no milk) and walks out onto the screened-in porch in the back of the house, curls up in one of the large chairs and just lets herself breathe. It’s cold outside, frost still clinging to the grass and the windows of the house, but it’s peaceful. No chance of something clanging down the street, sounding too much like a gunshot and leaving her shaking and on edge for the rest of the day.

 _I can stay here forever_ , she thinks, but she dismisses the idea almost immediately. Sure, _she_ could stay here but Matt can’t. Matt won’t, and wherever Matt goes Foggy goes. And wherever those two are to be found, she’ll be right there by their side. They’re the closest thing she has to family at this point. She’s not giving that up that easily.

“Mind if I join you?”

Karen is startled by Matt’s arrival, jumps slightly at the unexpected question and sloshes coffee over the sides of the cup. “Shit!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you like that,” Matt says sincerely as Karen dabs at the spots of coffee with her sleeve. “You look like you were lost in thought there. What were you thinking about?”

Karen shrugs, a reflexive movement that she’s not sure if Matt can sense, especially considering his back is turned to her as he reaches out to feel for where the little table between their chairs is located. “Nothing important, really,” she says, watching Matt set his coffee down and sit down in the other chair. “Just thinking about how much I like the quiet. Although I’m sure you’d disagree.”

“It’s growing on me,” Matt says. “It’s quieter than the city, but there’s enough to hear if you listen for it. The other houses nearby, whatever animals are living in the forest- couldn’t tell you what they are, but they’re out there. And the river beyond that, cars on the road…” He laughs. “But I’m sure you don’t want to listen to me recite a list of everything I can hear.”

“It’s kind of interesting,” Karen says. It’s the truth, and she hopes Matt can hear that. She studies Matt’s profile, takes in the dark circles under his eyes. Wonders if she looks as tired as he does. “You don’t seem like you slept well last night, despite it being quieter than in the city. Your stitches bothering you again?”

“The stitches are fine,” Matt assures her. “I would’ve been out on patrol last night, if we were back in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“And you probably would’ve ripped those stitches out, knowing you,” Karen says. “So it’s a good thing we’re here, instead of back there.”

Matt laughs. “You’re probably right. Give me another day, though, and I’ll be back to my usual self.”

“A good night’s rest would help with that too,” Karen says, not willing to let the topic go.

“So will meditation,” Matt counters. “I’ll be fine.”

“Matt…”

“The sheets bothered me, okay?” Matt mutters. “It’s another weird sense-thing. Cotton irritates my skin. I sleep on silk at home. It’s why I have to spend a fortune on my clothes, on the fabrics and tailoring and- everything.”

Karen thinks of all the times she and Foggy had made less-than-subtle jokes about how expensive Matt’s suits were, and feels like an ass. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” Matt says, taking a sip of his coffee. “We can just chalk it up to you being as exhausted as I am.”

Karen starts at that comment. “How did you-?”

“I can hear it in your voice,” Matt says. “It’s been going on for a while now, isn’t it? The nightmares that are keeping you up at night. Causing you to drink more coffee, get lost in thought more often- unpleasant thoughts too, your heart races and you go tense when you think about it.”

“I can see why Foggy got so angry at you when he found out, if you pulled this shit on him,” Karen snaps. It makes her skin prickle, knowing that he can read her so easily.

“It’s one of the things he yelled at me about, yeah,” Matt admits.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Karen says firmly. She can feel her own heart racing, knows that there’s no way Matt hasn’t picked up on her fight-or-flight response, and she prays that he lets the subject drop.

“Alright,” Matt says easily, leaning back in his chair. “Just… We’re here for you, yeah? If you ever want to talk.”

“I know,” Karen says quietly. She’s entertained the thought before, of what it would be like to tell Foggy and Matt the secret that’s eating her up inside. But she doesn’t know if she’ll ever have the strength to do that.

XXXXX

“So that’s why you always- Dude, not cool! I have been teasing you about those sheets for _years_!”

Karen hides her smile behind her cup of coffee- her second that morning, and Matt was kind enough to pretend not to notice- and watches the two friends bicker. Foggy had woken up about an hour after Matt and had immediately started in with, _Damnit Matty, you’re supposed to be resting! This is why we remain unconvinced that you actually know how to take care of yourself…_ and the back-and-forth ribbing has yet to stop.

“That’s it! Karen give me the car keys, I’m getting Matt new sheets-”

“Foggy, you can’t- neither of us can afford a set of silk sheets! I’ll be fine, it’s not that-”

“I am not having you sleep on the equivalent of _sandpaper_ when you are _supposed_ to be _resting_!”

“Keys are on the kitchen counter. There’s a larger town about half an hour south of here, you might be able to find something there,” Karen chimes in. “But none of us have had more than coffee this morning, so why don’t we eat breakfast before we continue this argument?”

Foggy and Matt exchange looks, and must reach a silence agreement to postpone the debate because Foggy shrugs and says, “Works for me.”

Karen starts to stand, but Matt beats her to it. “I’ll get this,” he says. “Everyone okay with eggs?”

“You can cook?” Karen asks skeptically.

“Learned at the orphanage,” Matt says as he moves back into the house. “The nuns thought it would help me be a more productive member of society, or something like that.”

“He’s pretty good at it, too,” Foggy says. “Made a couple meals for us both back in college, when we were too broke to afford takeout.”

“Somehow this is harder to believe than the superpowers,” Karen says, with no small amount of amusement.

Foggy chuckles at that and she hears Matt’s laughter drifting through the still-open door, amid the sounds of drawers open and utensils clanging. “No, what really unbelievable is his ability to always tell what fruit is perfectly ripe,” Foggy says. “Take him grocery shopping with you sometime. You’ll never have to worry about buying the wrong cantaloupe again.”

Karen shakes her head, grinning widely at the thought of Matt in a supermarket sniffing out ripe melons. “At some point, he’s going to stop surprising me,” she says fondly.

“Not likely,” Foggy says, still smiling faintly. He lowers his voice and leans in closer to Karen, asking, “Did you talk to him, this morning?”

“Not about anything more important than silk sheets,” she promises. They promised to fill each other in on everything that Matt tells them, and she intends to uphold her end of that promise.

“I can still hear you, you know that, right?” Matt calls out. There’s something sizzling on the stove and Karen’s stomach rumbles; she hopes those eggs taste as good as they smell.

“Eavesdropping is not polite, Murdock!” Foggy yells. Matt doesn’t answer but Karen thinks she can picture the smile he must have on his face.

The eggs are as good as they smell, better even, and when Foggy and Matt start bickering about bedsheets again she breaks up the argument by teasing Matt about his cooking skills. Foggy tries, unsuccessfully, to sneak out the house with the car keys while Karen has Matt distracted.

“Foggy, I see you trying to leave. Don’t even think about it.”

“I hate to break this to you buddy, but you’re blind. Pretty sure you can’t see jackshit.”

“Those jokes stopped being funny in freshman year,” Matt grumbles. He pulls his wallet off the counter and tosses it to Foggy with ease, no hesitation and no doubt in his aim. Karen wonders how much energy he spent hiding this from them, and when she’ll get used to seeing him like this instead. “Buy satin sheets. They’ll be cheaper, and they’ll be good enough.”

Foggy tosses Matt’s wallet onto the little table by the door and leaves, muttering something about how _Good enough isn’t the point here buddy, are you freaking kidding me_ and leaving Matt shaking his head in exasperation at his friend.

“There isn’t a lot he wouldn’t do for you,” Karen says quietly. “I- I know you probably know that, but I think it’s worth repeating.”

“I know.” Matt looks more tired than he did when Foggy was around, like he was putting on an act for his friend. Knowing Matt, he probably was. Never wants anyone to worry about him, and that’s more than half his problem. Matt looks up at Karen and adds, “I’m sorry for not telling you- about me being Daredevil, that is. I know you care about me. Worry about me. And I care about you too, which is why I didn’t want you getting involved-”

“I was involved from the moment you rescued me from that guy in my apartment, back when we thought this was just about Union Allied,” Karen says. “Your real problem is that you think people are safer when they’re kept in the dark, but they aren’t. People like Mrs. Cardenas get killed even when they don’t know what’s going on, and so do people who know everything like… like Ben…”

Karen covers her mouth with her hand, squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself to not cry. She’s tired of crying. She’s tired of feeling this _broken_ inside every time she remembers those last few hellish days of the Fisk case. Arms wrap around her shoulders and Karen flinches away, heart rate skyrocketing before she can register that it’s just Matt. “Sorry,” she chokes out. “Sorry, I’m…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Matt says gently. He hesitates for a moment before adding, “I- I don’t know if this will make things worse, but I know there’s more you want to say so you should just… come out and say it, I guess. That’s what this week is about, isn’t it?”

There’s a lot Karen wants to say, and a lot more that she doesn’t know how to put into words. So she settles on one of the easier questions, out of the dozens bouncing around in her head, “How do you decide who to save?”

“I save anyone I can,” Matt says. “That night when you went back to your apartment, I was expecting you to leave so I followed you. But I can’t be everywhere at once, and too many people still die because I can’t reach them in time. Or never even hear that they’re in danger. I… I’ll never be able save everyone.”

There’s self-damnation in his voice, bitter and harsh, and Karen wants to reach out and comfort him but she’s still too fragile and she doesn’t know what to do, just sits there as Matt continues speaking. “I never though Elena Cardenas would be a target. Didn’t even think of keeping an eye on her. But Ben Urich…” Matt swallows harshly. Karen thinks there are tears in his eyes. “I should’ve seen that coming. I’ll be living with that guilt for a long time.”

“It’s not your fault,” Karen says weakly.

“I should’ve been watching him,” Matt says. He sounds as broken as she feels and her heart aches for him, but she doesn’t know how to make this better. She doesn’t know how to make anything better these days. “I should’ve been watching both of you, after you said you went and saw Fisk’s mother, but I wasn’t. Ben Urich is dead because of that oversight, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that nothing happened to you.”

Karen’s hand flies to her mouth and she curls in on herself. She feels sick, and there’s a very good chance that she’s about to throw up the eggs she had for breakfast.

_His hands on her shoulders, the tears she tried to hold back, his voice- she can’t stop hearing his voice, his words, they never stop-_

“Karen? Karen, what’s wrong?” Matt asks, his voice suddenly filled with concern.

_-the weight of the gun in her hand and that look of shock on his face after the first shot, the echo of gunshot in her ears god, she never stops hearing it, shot after shot after shot, red blood spreading across a white shirt, blood on her hands, she has blood on her hands-_

She scrambles up from her chair, knows that she won’t make it to the bathroom in time and bolts for the kitchen instead, making it to the trash can just in time to lose her breakfast. She’s crying now, openly sobbing, clinging to the counter as she continues to heave, long past there’s anything left in her stomach to actually throw up. Matt is there, rubbing her back gently and god, with his sense of smell how does he not want to vomit as well?

It’s several long minutes before Karen has the strength to stand up. Matt moves away; she hears the fridge open just before a cold bottle of water is pressed into her hand. “Thanks,” she says, her voice hoarse. “Sorry about that, I’ll clean up-”

“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you,” Matt says quietly. “I know there’s been something bothering you for a while and… Karen, did something happen? Something with Fisk?”

She can’t tell him. Technically the Fisk investigation is still ongoing. They never found anyone for Wesley’s murder and if Matt and Foggy knew… They’re lawyers, they’d have to tell and she’d… She would…

“I can’t… Oh god, I can’t stop thinking about it,” she says, her voice breaking on another sob.

Matt wraps an arm around her and leads her to the other room, pushes her down on a couch and takes her hands in his. “Karen. What happened?”

“He drugged me and I- I couldn’t move, I tried to leave and my body wasn’t working right,” Karen babbles. Now that she’s started talking she can’t stop, a rushing torrent of words falling from her mouth before she can even think of stopping them. “He kept talking and talking and he- he knew we went to see Fisk’s mother, he knew we were both there, but he said he wasn’t going to kill me. There was a gun, he put it on the table, but he offered me a job telling people I was wrong about Fisk. He got a call… he was distracted and I grabbed the gun and I…”

“God… Karen…” Matt breathes, and it’s that little blasphemy that drives the knife in Karen’s heart even deeper, breaks something open inside her just when she thought everything in her soul was already in pieces.

“He threatened you! He threatened all of you, and he knew Ben was with me and I- if I took the offer he wouldn’t be safe, none of us would be safe!” Karen is near hysterical at this point but she can’t stop talking, she can’t stop telling Matt what happened now that she’s started. “He went to stand up and I shot him, and I should’ve just left then but I- I kept shooting him, I couldn’t stop! I killed him, I killed Wesley and I threw the gun into the river and I… I…”

Karen crumples, clings to Matt and just _sobs_ because she’s spent all of her energy trying to maintain the façade that just shattered and she doesn’t know what to do now except give into her exhaustion completely.

Matt’s arms are shaking as he holds her but he doesn’t say anything as Karen cries, and cries, and cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karen didn't get her own voice in the last story, so I wanted to make sure she got one this time around. Writing her is different from writing Matt or Foggy, and I'm not sure if I've managed to quite capture her personality the way I wanted to. 
> 
> And yes, her big reveal- I don't think it would ever be something she would willingly admit to, but there's only so long you can keep a secret like that before you just snap and it comes out anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to everyone who missed the last update! I accidentally back-dated the chapter when I posted it, so if you went through the fandom's updates chronologically you probably missed it. I rarely post my stories as WIPs like this, so clearly I need to familiarize myself with AO3's "new chapter" features a little bit better before I update!

Matt doesn’t need his enhanced senses to feel the tension in the room. Foggy is standing by the fireplace, leaning against the mantle like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. Karen is on the couch, curled up into a tiny ball, heart beating so fast that it’s a miracle she hasn’t had another panic attack. Matt has wedged himself into the corner, not daring to move for fear of disturbing the precarious silence in the room.

This really isn’t how he thought this week would go.

Matt had told Foggy what Karen had told him- with her permission, though given how mentally and physically exhausted she was at the time he’s not sure she would have had the energy to fight him about that even if she wanted to. They’ve been in a silent stand-off ever since then, no one saying anything because no one has any idea what they’re supposed to say in a situation like this.

What, exactly, is the proper response to your friend admitting that she killed a man?

“So here’s the thing,” Foggy says suddenly. His heart is quiet, calmed down significantly from how it was when Matt first told him what he had learned, and Matt feels himself unconsciously relax when he hears it. Everything is going to be okay.

Karen, however, can’t pick up on cues like that and her heart is still jackhammering in her chest. Matt wishes he could say something to comfort her, but Foggy is still talking. “At some point, we are going to sit down and have a long discussion about the sort of secrets that you two are no longer allowed to actually keep secret because seriously you guys? _Seriously_?”

“Foggy,” Matt murmurs, a quiet warning to his friend to tone it down a little because Karen’s anxiety and fear are going through the roof right now.

Foggy sighs. “Sorry, sorry. Look, Karen, what I was trying to say was…” Matt hears him turn around for the first time and his reaction is so predictable; Matt knows exactly what Foggy will say and do before it actually happens.

All the tension bleeds out of Foggy’s frame, his rapid heartbeat now due solely to worry over their friend. “Hey, hey, hey, Karen it’s okay, you’re okay, everything is going to be okay…” Foggy says, quickly crossing the room and sitting down next to her on the couch. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and coaxes Karen to sit up, to uncurl a little and to calm down, in that way that only Foggy Nelson seems to be able to do.

Matt’s not sure how he manages because it’s a skill he certainly doesn’t have, but he’s always grateful that Foggy knows what to do in situations like this.

“I probably should have led with this, but we all know that thinking before I speak isn’t always my strong suit,” Foggy says, his voice gentler than it was before. “So, for the official record, you’re okay. And everything is okay. With us and your secret and everything, I mean.”

Matt snorts. “That’s a hell of an opening statement.”

He doesn’t need to be able to see Foggy’s facial expressions to feel the heat of the glare that’s sent his way. “You want to try doing better, Murdock?”

“I think what Foggy is trying to say is that we know you were acting in self-defense, and we aren’t going to judge you for your actions,” Matt says smoothly. “And, speaking for myself, if he wasn’t already dead I’d hunt him down and kill him myself for abducting and drugging you in the first place.”

“Actually Matt, you can speak for the both of us with that last bit,” Foggy is quick to interject. “I would also hunt him down and… y’know, rough him up a bit, teach him a thing or two about… things…”

Matt wonders if Karen smiles at that. He can’t hear facial expressions, no matter how many years he’s spent trying. He does hear her soft exhale, something that would maybe pass as a laugh if it didn’t sound like it was on the verge of being another sob. “I think you should leave the revenge for Matt,” she says weakly.

Foggy chuckles at that. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he admits. “But the offer still stands. Or would, if…”

Matt tenses, but Foggy cuts himself off before finishing the sentence with _if Wesley wasn’t already dead_. But Karen knows what he was going to say and she immediately closes herself off again; her heart rate has increased, and he can smell salt in the air- tears or sweat, or more likely both.

“Look, I- I appreciate the support,” Karen says. Her voice is shaking, her hands are twisting in her lap, nerves apparent to everyone in the room. “But… you guys are lawyers. Aren’t you supposed to… to report things like this? To the police? Or something?”

“Attorney-client privilege,” Foggy says. “Technically we’re still your lawyers, so you just have to invoke your right to keep this confidential and nothing comes of it.”

“I don’t think it works that way, Foggy,” Karen says.

“It was definitely self-defense, Karen,” Matt says firmly. “Nothing that has to be reported, even if attorney-client privilege didn't already apply."

“I’m- I’m pretty sure you still have to report things like this.”

And Matt really, _really_ hates not being able to read facial expressions, hates hearing that note in her voice but not being able to see the non-verbal cues that other people can. She’s not joking, he knows that much but- is she trying to smile? Grimacing? Whatever it is, it’s subtle enough that he can’t pick up on it and that frustrates him.

Foggy, though. Foggy can see her face and Matt can hear him reach for her hand, squeezing it tightly as he says, “There is not a single jury in this country who would convict you of anything. There’s no evidence, and even if there was you think anyone would care that you killed the right-hand man of Wilson Fisk? I mean, sure we could call the police but I’m not sure they’d appreciate you wasting their time like that.”

“Not to mention, we’d have to charge you for being your lawyers this time and we all know you don’t have the money for that,” Matt adds. He’s teasing, and he hopes Karen picks up on that.

Luckily she does because she gives a small, watery giggle in reply. “That’s only because you guys don’t pay me.”

“Not the point!” Foggy says with mock indignation. “We’d have to take you to claims court, and you’d definitely lose but then we’d be wasting more people’s time and more resources and you can see where this is going, can’t you?”

Karen laughs quietly again; it sounds less sad this time. “Yeah, I think I do,” she says. “So… So are we okay, then?”

“Yeah, Karen,” Matt says. “We’re okay.”

“ _You_ , personally, however look like-” Foggy pauses, trying to find the right words. “-like you could use about a year’s worth of good sleep. You should go take a nap, just rest for a bit.”

“You just want to talk about me with Matt,” Karen says. Matt thinks she’s smiling this time; at the very least, he knows she’s not about to cry anymore.

“Well duh,” Foggy says. “But the way I see it, you can either stay down here and pretend not to eavesdrop and we will do our best to be as sneaky as possible, or you can go upstairs and relax and pretend that we aren’t talking about you. You don’t even have to sleep- have you _seen_ that bathtub in the bathroom upstairs? I’m so calling dibs on it for tonight, but I’ll let you have it in the meantime.”

“Good to know chivalry isn’t dead,” Matt deadpans. Karen’s frame is more relaxed, her heartbeat almost back to normal, and it helps him relax as well. It will take more than a bath and a nap to completely fix things, but she’ll get there.

They’ll all get there, eventually.

Karen stands up and kisses them both on the cheek. “Thank you,” she says softly. Matt’s pretty sure there are tears in her eyes again. “For… just for everything.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” Foggy says. He hugs Karen again and Matt listens as she walks out of the room, moves upstairs… He hears the water start running in the bathroom and smiles. Even if she wants to eavesdrop, she’ll have a hard time hearing them over that.

“Christ,” Foggy mutters after Karen leaves. He waves a hand vaguely in Matt’s direction and adds, “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

“I do, and the sentiment is shared,” Matt says. His own exhaustion is creeping back up on him, makes him feel as tired as Foggy sounds. This isn’t how he thought this day would go when he woke up this morning. “I wasn’t pushing her for info, you know. She just… sort of broke down. I never thought _this_ …”

“Yeah.”

The one advantage of being friends with someone for so long is that Matt knows that Foggy knows how that sentence was going to end, even if Matt never finished it. It’s a trick that comes in handy when Matt continues, “When she started talking… When she said she was drugged and kidnapped I thought…” He can’t bring himself to say the word _rape_ , just like neither of them can quite muster up the courage to say _murder_ , but Foggy knows. Foggy always knows. “I don’t know if this is better or worse, but at least she’s not alone in this anymore.”

“For whatever that’s worth,” Foggy says. “I think this is a little above my paygrade as a wannabe-therapist, Matty.”

Matt thinks it’s above his paygrade too, but he knows it’s not going to stop either of them from trying. After everything they’d been through together, Karen is as good as family. Matt knows the sting of abandonment well enough to know that he’d rather die than inflict that on anyone else.

“What were you two talking about anyway, before she told you about this?” Foggy asks suddenly. There’s no censure in his voice, no change to his heartbeat or his breathing, no tell-tale shift in his posture that Matt could detect at least. Honest curiosity, then. Less of a chance of this being an interrogation, and Matt hates how he relaxes slightly at that realization but he does.

“We were talking about the things I do. My Daredevil stuff,” Matt says. “Ben Urich got brought up… and how I was too stupid to save him.”

Foggy sighs. “Matt, it’s not your fault-”

“I should’ve been watching him, after Karen told us she went to see Fisk’s mother. I should have been watching him and Karen both. But I wasn’t, and Urich is dead and Karen’s only alive because she killed Wesley before he killed her. That’s all on me, Foggy.”

Matt’s used to feeling guilty, about things he did and things he failed to do. Foggy jokes about it being due to his Catholicism, has been making good-natured jabs at Matt’s religion whenever he feels Matt is getting too broody ever since college, ever since he realized that Matt doesn’t actually mind the teasing that much. The only reason Matt doesn’t mind because he’s not convinced that this facet of his personality can be strictly attributed solely to his religion, rather than part of a larger character flaw. But he’ll never admit that to Foggy.

It doesn’t matter, either way. The guilt is there, and no matter how many times he sees Father Lantom for confession it will never completely go away.

But Foggy is talking again, and Matt forces himself to focus on what his friend is saying “-couldn’t have known, Matt. You were too busy with the thousand other things Fisk was doing- we were all too busy worrying about something else.” Foggy swallows roughly and Matt can sense his nervousness now, the way he’s fidgeting slightly, how his heartbeat isn’t as level as it was a few minutes ago. “Did Karen tell you when she was abducted? Because I figured it out, when it had to have happened. Did she tell you that she was with me at Josie’s less than half an hour before that?”

Matt feels something twist inside him because he knows that tone that he hears in Foggy’s voice, remembers it from when they got the news about Elena Cardenas’s death, and he can’t… he won’t… “This isn’t your fault, Foggy,” he snaps. He _never_ wants Foggy to feel like something like this is on his head.

Foggy laughs, but Matt doesn’t think he sounds particularly amused. “Pot meet kettle, am I right?”

“Am I the pot, or am I the kettle?”

“Really don’t think it matters, buddy.” And yeah, Matt is going to have to agree with him there. “Matt… what the hell do we do now?”

Matt has no idea.

XXXXX

They end up making lunch. Or rather, Matt bribes Foggy into switching out the sheets on the bed upstairs with the promise of lunch. “Sandwiches okay?” he asks, because he’s pretty sure there’s lunch meat and cheese in the fridge. There’s definitely bread, at the very least, and he can improvise from there.

“Works for me,” Foggy says. Matt can hear the rustling of a plastic bag as he pulls out the sheets he bought. “Hope you like pink zebra print, by the way. And you owe me thirty bucks.”

Matt thinks he’s lying about the color of the sheets, but he can’t always pick up on Foggy’s casual teasing lies like that. “I’m not gonna see them, so why does it matter?” he counters. “And I wouldn’t owe you any money if you had just taken my wallet.”

“But then I couldn’t bother you about being in my debt, so clearly I made the right choice here,” Foggy says, already moving upstairs before Matt can think about retorting.

Matt absentmindedly listens to Foggy’s movements, tells himself it’s because he wants to make sure that Foggy isn’t trying to short-sheet his bed or something like that. Deep down, he knows it’s because he’s spent too many years around Foggy, close living quarters and late nights studying or working a case when Foggy’s voice and heartbeat were the loudest things in the room. At some point the noises started grounding him, keeping him focused and calm on bad days when it seemed like any little thing would set his senses off. Reminding him that he has friends who care about him now. That Foggy didn’t walk out of his life forever after Matt screwed everything up.

Although really, Matt wouldn’t put it past Foggy to try to short-sheet the bed, just to screw with him. Matt still remembers when Foggy moved all of his furniture out of the dorm room, after all.

Foggy doesn’t mess with the bed though, just moves methodically around it as he changes out the too-scratchy cotton sheets for the satin ones he bought earlier. Truth be told those will still be more uncomfortable than Matt would like, but they’ll be better than the cotton and he’ll never say anything more about it to Foggy. Matt listens to the near-silent creak of the floorboards as Foggy moves around the room, the soft whisper of the new sheets, the steady _thump-thump, thump-thump_ of his friend’s heart, as he begins making their sandwiches.

Matt is just starting to slice an onion when he hears a new noise from upstairs- the bathroom door, opening slowly and Karen’s quiet footsteps as she moves across the hallway to her own room. Foggy must hear her door close behind her because his movements falter. A pause, and then he’s moving across the hall to stand outside her door.

Matt holds his breath, wondering what exactly Foggy is planning on doing because it seems to him like the obvious course of action is _not bothering Karen_. She needs to know that they’re here for her, yeah, but Matt knows what it’s like to have a secret of this magnitude come to light and not be able to get away from the never-ending questions. Foggy is great, he really is, but sometimes he just doesn’t _think_ -

Foggy raises his hand as if to knock on the door and Matt is so focused on what’s going on a floor above him (don’t do it Foggy, just don’t do it-) that he almost forgets he’s slicing onions, until he feels a sharp pain in his finger. “Shit!” He drops the knife instinctively and it bounces off the counter, loudly clattering to the floor.

Matt’s just happy it didn’t hit his foot.

The cut is bleeding pretty badly. Matt can smell the tang of copper in the air, a scent he grew familiar with even before he lost his vision, and he doesn’t want to get bloodstains on anything in the kitchen so he moves quickly to the sink and turns on the water to rinse the cut out. He winces as the water hits the wound and he gently feels for the edges of the cut, hoping that it isn’t too deep.

“Woah, Matt what happened? You cut yourself?” Foggy asks. He comes to stand next to Matt says, “Here, let me see,” and Matt lets him look at the cut without complaint. It’s a familiar routine from their college days, when Matt would get distracted and trip over something while walking back to the dorm. It’s easier to let Foggy fuss over him for a minute than try to convince his friend that nothing was wrong (even if, most of the time, nothing really is wrong).

It’s what made Matt’s early lies so much easier to tell. He had honestly tripped while taking out the trash once or twice before, distracted by the sounds of a fight on the verge of breaking out a few blocks away to notice that there was an extra step that he had forgotten about.

Foggy had patched him up then too, come to think of it.

“How bad is it?” Matt asks.

“You can’t tell?”

“It doesn’t feel that deep, but I know it was bleeding pretty good,” Matt says. “I can’t _see_ it, Foggy. I can only feel it, and that’s not always accurate.”

Foggy _hmms_ and then says, “Well I don’t think it’s that bad. I think I packed some of that liquid bandage stuff in the first aid kit, so I can put some of that on if you want?”

“Yeah, sure,” Matt says, before the rest of Foggy’s sentence catches up with him. “Wait, you brought a first aid kit?”

“Technically Karen brought a first aid kit, but I helped stock it,” Foggy says. His voice is coming from a few rooms over, but he’s not talking any louder than he would be if he was standing right in front of Matt. Probably doesn’t want to wake up Karen, and that’s definitely a point in favor of Matt’s heightened senses.

Matt’s not confused about the existence of a first aid kit because really, anyone who knows Foggy and Karen could have seen this coming. Knowing them there are probably braille labels on everything in there. He’s more confused about why it’s _here_ , why they felt the need to bring it along with them on a vacation.

“Any particular reason you thought we’d need a first aid kit this week?” he asks as Foggy returns. He can smell the liquid bandage when Foggy unscrews the top and has to resist the urge to wrinkle his nose at the foul odor. The stuff works; that’s all that matters.

“Because you’re here, obviously,” Foggy replies as he starts spreading the liquid over the cut. “And for a superhero, you have to admit that you’re ridiculously clumsy sometimes. Like now. Aren’t your super-senses supposed to stop you from doing things like this?”

“I’m not a _superhero_ ,” Matt counters. “And I don’t have super-senses. They only work for whatever I’m focusing on at the time. I got a little distracted, wasn’t paying attention to where my hand was, and sliced a finger. It’s not a big deal.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything but Matt can feel his friend tense up, his breathing changing as he obviously thinks of _something_ that has upset him. Matt doesn’t have to wait long for the question. “So when you’re out fighting… Do you get distracted a lot?”

“Sometimes,” Matt admits. “If I hear something that catches my attention, or I have something else on my mind…”

Foggy’s heart starts to race, his posture stiffening even more and shit, _shit_ , Matt shouldn’t have said that-

“You get distracted if you have things on your mind? Like Daredevil things, or Matt things?”

Foggy is angry, he’s _pissed_ , and Matt feels a flare of anger in response because seriously? “What are you saying? You think I don’t know how to compartmentalize? You think I’m letting every little thing in my life affect how I do my job?”

“I don’t know, Matt, you tell me!” Foggy says. “You got freaked out when Karen confronted you, and the next day we find you fucking _bleeding to death_ -”

“What do you want me to say, Foggy?” Matt snaps. “Maybe I was distracted that night, maybe I was moving too slow and was too cocky about my suit doing its damn job to stop the knife myself. Does that make you feel any better?”

“No, of course not!” Foggy’s voice is raised, his worry and anger blending together, rolling off of him like a storm. “But what am I supposed to do here? Never make you angry, in case you go out and get yourself killed because of it? Because I don’t know if I can do that, Matt!”

“You’re supposed to trust me to know what I’m doing!” Matt shouts. He’s angry, he’s _furious_ , but underneath that is a bolt of fear, a memory of _You're gonna get yourself killed if you keep this up, you know that, right?_ and Foggy walking out of his apartment, and if Foggy can’t do this-

Matt wants to hit something. Matt _needs_ to hit something, needs to let this anger out before it turns into panic, before he does something stupid that he’ll regret later. But there’s no gym here, nothing he can punch in a house that isn’t even his, and he just needs to get _away-_

He pushes past Foggy, storms out to the porch where their coffee cups are still sitting from that morning, out into the backyard that’s too quiet, too empty, too-

“Arghh!” he yells, spinning around and driving his fist into a tree that’s growing near the house. The bark digs into his knuckles, splinters of wood cutting open his skin as Matt punches the tree again, and again, and again, until his arm is numb and his hand is on fire.

“Matt!” An arm grabs his shoulder, spins him around and Matt moves to lash out but before he can he’s shoved back into the tree, hard enough to drive a quiet grunt from him. “Matt, cut it out!”

It’s Foggy. It’s always Foggy, and the fight leaves Matt almost immediately. He lets out a choking laugh, something that’s not quite a chuckle but which he will deny was anything close to a sob, and says, “I think I’m gonna need help with my hand again.”

Foggy sighs. Matt can see his fiery outline slump, all his earlier anger gone and replaced with a weariness that causes a stab of guilt in Matt’s heart. “Yeah, I think you’re gonna,” he says tiredly. “C’mon. Let’s get back inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the end of talking about Karen's secrets and unresolved issues, I promise. But we've all seen how well these three do with talking in the show (not very well at all), so discussions don't always get wrapped up neatly. Next chapter I promise there's finally Real Mature Conversations, though!


	4. Chapter 4

Foggy never wants to dig splinters of wood out of his friend’s hand again. It’s not the blood, really, because Matt’s hand isn’t bleeding all that much. Scrapes and bruises mostly and yeah, they’re pretty gruesome to look at but they don’t even reach the level of horror that was Matt bleeding to death on his apartment floor. It’s not even that difficult to clean up his hand, especially not once Matt tells him that nothing’s broken and he doesn’t have to worry about accidentally jostling cracked bones. All he needs is a pair of tweezers and a good deal of bacitracin ointment (thank god he brought that first-aid kit), and he’s good to go.

No, Foggy never wants to do this again because in the time it took to get Matt back inside his friend has completely shut down. He’s closed himself off, his face unreadable and he’s not even reacting to anything Foggy says or does anymore. He’s so deep in his usual bout of guilt and self-loathing and abandonment issues that Foggy’s head hurts just thinking about how much effort it’s going to take to pull Matt out of this.

Because the thing is, Foggy is tired. He’s tired of dealing with other people’s issues and feeling like he’s not actually getting anywhere. He’s tired of constantly doing the _one step forward, two steps back_ routine with Matt. And he’s angry that Matt can’t even trust him enough to tell the difference between _honestly worried about his best friend_ and _thinks Matt can’t take care of himself at all_ , angry that even after all these years he apparently still has all these doubts about Foggy, and-

Foggy takes a deep breath, forces himself to remain as calm as possible. Getting angry is not going to help the situation, not when Matt can probably tell how furious he is right now.

And when Foggy lets himself get properly angry later, he’ll be pissed off at that fact too.

“You’re all done,” he says as he finishes wrapping the bandage around Matt’s hand and secures the end. “I wouldn’t recommend punching anything else for a little while, but you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” Matt murmurs, absentmindedly flexing his hand, already testing the mobility as if he’s back in Hell’s Kitchen, preparing to go out as Daredevil that night. “I’m gonna go-”

“No you’re not,” Foggy says sharply. He points at the couch. “Sit down.”

“Foggy-”

“Sit. Down.”

Matt sits. It almost takes Foggy by surprise, but he only fumbles for a moment. “Matt, I’m sorry for insinuating that you don’t know how to do your Daredevil job,” he says sincerely. He’s hoping that starting with an apology might make this conversation easier, but it doesn’t seem to be putting Matt at ease. “I get how you thought I was saying that, believe me I do. But you have to understand, buddy, I am scared _shitless_ by all of this. If anything I say or do makes it harder for you to stay safe I need to know, because the last thing I want to do is make things more dangerous for you.”

Foggy isn’t expecting a response and he is caught off-guard when Matt says quietly, “I’m sorry for going off on you like that. But Foggy, I compartmentalize things every day. Not all of it about you, or Karen, or the office. ‘s how I deal with everything I sense all the time. I need you to not doubt me. I need you to have my back in this.”

Foggy sighs. “You know that’s easier said than done. I know you’re always gonna do this, and I know I can’t stop you, but is there a middle ground between supporting you and where we were when I first found out? Because I think that’s where I am right now, and I’m gonna need a hell of a lot more time to process this before I’m actually _okay_ with everything.”

He might not have super-senses, but he doesn’t need them to see how Matt curls in on himself slightly at those words and Foggy is quick to continue with, “But Matt, that doesn’t mean I’m walking away. We’re in this together, Nelson and Murdock, and nothing’s gonna change that, okay? I need _you_ to believe that, because I’m running out of ways to convince you of how much this friendship means to me and if we want to actually work through this we can’t keep second-guessing something that should be a rock-solid foundation at this point.”

Matt doesn’t say anything for probably a solid minute and Foggy is convinced that he pushed too hard, that something he said only made things worse and _damnit_ , he knows Matt has issues but this is getting ridiculous-

“Okay,” Matt finally says, and Foggy releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Okay. I… I believe you. And I’m sorry. For doubting… everything.”

Foggy doesn’t know if he quite believes Matt, and that realization hurts more than he thought it would. “Okay. Good. We still have a boatload of things to talk about, but… later, yeah? Definitely later.”

Matt smiles. At least, he attempts a smile and Foggy is willing to overlook how shaky and forced it is in favor of just counting it as a victory. “Later works for me. I’m think I’m going to meditate for a bit… if you don’t mind?”

Foggy realizes after a moment that that was a genuine question, Matt’s way of telling him _I’m not trying to get away from you_ and _I’m overwhelmed and need to refocus_ and _please don’t get angry again please don’t get angry_. “Yeah, of course,” he says quickly. “Do you want me to, uh, leave or go somewhere or…?”

“No, I’ll go upstairs,” Matt says, already standing, and there’s this awkwardness to his movements as if neither of them know how to exit this uncomfortable conversation because things have never really been this strained between them before. Matt ends up doing this weird little nod and just leaving without saying anything else and Foggy sighs, burying his face in his hands and wondering when the hell things had gotten so bad between them.

There are quiet voices on the stairs- Matt and Karen, obviously, no one else in the house, but Foggy’s not the one with super-senses and he can’t hear what they’re saying. It doesn’t matter, in the end; Matt disappears upstairs, and Karen comes downstairs, takes one look at him and says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

The house they’re staying in isn’t on a real street, just a little community of two dozen houses or so tucked away on a cul-de-sac in the woods. Foggy doesn’t think they can actually get far enough away from the house to stop Matt from hearing them, but maybe if he really is meditating he’ll tune them out. Foggy doesn’t know how that works- adds that question to the mental list he’s created, for whenever they actually get around to talking about this stuff.

“I heard you and Matt fighting,” Karen says suddenly. “Saw his hands. Do you want to talk about it?”

“If you heard us, there’s not really much I need to add,” Foggy snaps, and he immediately feels like a dick. “Sorry. This has just been a very long, very bad day and I’m tired of Matt acting like he thinks our entire friendship is a lie because I am running out of ideas for things to say to him to make this situation better.”

“I’m sorry,” Karen says softly, and Foggy really has no idea what to do with that.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asks.

“Because Matt and I have been dumping all of our problems on you and it’s not fair to you,” Karen says. “You shouldn’t have to play therapist to both of us.”

“Karen, I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but I have dealt with more than enough unwanted guilt for one day,” Foggy says tiredly.

He’s really thankful that he doesn’t have Matt’s ability to hear heartbeats because he’s more than willing to take Karen’s quiet, “Sure, Foggy, of course,” at face-value even though he knows deep-down that he probably only made her feel even worse.

They walk in silence for several long minutes until Foggy sighs, and asks, “Alright. Let’s talk about it. How are you handling everything?”

“Do you really want to hear about it, or are you going to get annoyed when I get emotional again?” Karen counters.

Foggy winces. “That… yeah, that’s fair. I’m sorry, you and Matt have every right to-”

“Foggy, just stop,” Karen interrupts. “ _You_ have every right to be worn-out from dealing with us. If you want to have this conversation now we can, but if you aren’t up for it…”

“No! Let’s talk, I’m all up for talking!” Foggy can worry about his own problems later. He’s always been the guy who was there for his friends, and he’s not gonna stop being that guy now. He slings an arm around Karen’s shoulders and says, “So, what’s on your mind?”

Karen laughs- score one for Foggy- and shrugs his arm off. “You’re ridiculous.” When she doesn’t continue right away Foggy doesn’t know if he should push her to keep talking or not. It didn’t work that well when he did that with Matt, but pushing people to share their problems is sort of his thing- but do they even have to talk about this now? A break from talking about things might be good for them all, himself included, and maybe he should just-

“I think I understand now, why Matt has a hard time talking about everything. Why he reacts like he does,” she says, so quietly that Foggy almost misses it at first. He glances over at her but doesn’t say anything. If she wants to talk, that’s more than he gets from Matt most days. He’ll let her talk at her own pace, and see where it gets him.

“I was never going to tell you guys, not because I don’t trust you but because… You don’t think rationally about things like this, you know? You can’t take any chances, even with people you trust. Having you guys know this is terrifying, actually terrifying, and I don’t want to talk about it because I desperately need to act like nothing’s wrong. But I saw how well that didn’t work for you and Matt so. Here we are.”

“Yeah.” Foggy doesn’t know what he’s supposed to stay in response to that. Something uncomfortable settles in Foggy’s stomach at the realization that he is _way_ out of his league, that Karen probably knows how to deal with Matt’s issues better than he does at this point- that Foggy might have been making things worse all along. “Here we are.”

XXXXX

Matt has been standing in the doorway to the porch for the past few minutes, and Foggy has been pretending not to notice him because he’s not sure if he’s really in the mood to talk to Matt at the moment. His stomach has been in knots all evening as he weighs everything he ever said to Matt about this mess, tries to figure out if he’s really been making things better or not.

“You can’t be comfortable out here,” Matt says, finally taking a step forward. “It’s freezing, and it’s raining. Come inside.”

Foggy shrugs. “The rain’s comforting,” he says. “Think I’ll stay out here.”

Matt sighs and drops down onto one of the other chairs. “You’re worrying me, Foggy. Karen says you got freaked out after your walk this afternoon, and you’ve been avoiding us ever since. If you’re still angry about our fight…”

“I’m not angry at you, Matt,” Foggy says. “It’s nothing. Just… just leave me alone.”

“No,” Matt says, taking Foggy by surprise. “I’m not gonna leave you alone. We left the city so we could talk, without any distractions. But instead things have gone to hell and you’re worrying me now. Just talk to me, like you were planning on doing.”

“You said it yourself,” Foggy murmurs. “Talking only makes things worse, right?”

“And you told me I was wrong,” Matt says.

“Maybe you weren’t,” Foggy counters. “Just tell me Matt, have I been going at this all wrong? Have I been making everything worse, all this time?”

“I don’t think there’s a how-to guide for how this is supposed to work,” Matt tells him. “All I know is that you’ve been trying to fix things, like you always try to fix things, and I’ve been a pain in the ass and ignoring you and making everything worse.”

“It hasn’t just been you, Matt.”

“No, it’s been all of us,” a new voice says by the door. Karen is standing there, a pile of blankets in her hands and a forced smile on her pale face. “We need to talk about this. Before Foggy takes on enough guilt to rival Matt, and before Matt attacks any more nearby foliage.”

“And before you decide you’re better off without us two nutcases?” Matt jokes.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with me now,” Karen says. She passes blankets over to Foggy and Matt and curls up in a chair of her own. “So. Who wants to go first?”

Foggy and Matt exchange a look, and Foggy knows that Matt is never going to be the first one to speak. “I think at this point, we kind of all know how everyone feels about things,” Foggy says slowly. “Karen is more okay with Matt being a vigilante than I am, but neither of us are walking away from him. And Matt and I have your back too, Karen. Like you said, you’re stuck with us.”

“We’re all here and we all support each other, but that doesn’t mean jackshit if we don’t talk about everything else that’s bothering us,” Karen says.

“No, but if we can’t even accept that no one’s going to bolt when they try talking about something, we aren’t going to get anything accomplished,” Foggy points out.

He glances over at Matt, who just shakes his head and says, “I believe you, Foggy. I really do.”

“So we’re back to my initial question then,” Karen says. “Who wants to go first?”

Matt’s hands are twisted in the blanket and he is doing his best to give off _not me_ vibes. Karen keeps looking between the two of them, as if waiting for one of them to speak first, and damnit why does Foggy always have to be the one to bite the bullet?

“I don’t know if this is a conversation we want to have now, but I can’t have you two keeping secrets like this from me,” Foggy says quietly. “I wasn’t lying when I told you that I don’t have secrets, nothing anywhere near this scale, and I can’t- I can’t keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with you two. If we want Nelson and Murdock- and Page- to stay afloat we need honesty. Transparency.”

“That’s fair,” Karen says quietly. “That’s… more than fair, actually.”

Matt is silent and that gets Foggy’s nerves up again. “Matt, what about you? You okay with the Honesty First plan?”

“What level of honesty are we talking about?” Matt asks. “Do I have to tell you everything I do all the time, or just when I crack down on Fisk levels of organized crime?”

“Well I’d hope you aren’t planning on going after people like Fisk anytime soon,” Foggy says, his heart racing at the thought of getting involved in another mess like that.

“I didn’t plan on going after Fisk in the first place, it just sort of happened,” Matt says tersely.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Karen interrupts. “No fighting. Not now. I’m making that rule number two.”

“Rule number two?” Foggy echoes. “What was rule number one?”

“Matt isn’t allowed to second-guess your entire friendship.”

“What- That’s not what I- I didn’t-” Foggy splutters, feeling momentary panic welling up inside him.

But Matt laughs and says, “It’s okay, Foggy,” and he feels some of that anxiety start to subside almost as quickly as it came on.

“Foggy has a point, though,” Karen says. “I think if he has his way, he’d want to give you a GPS implant but we don’t exactly have the money for that.”

Foggy wants to be outraged because a GPS chip is a little over-the-top, even for him, but there is a part of him that thinks it sounds like a good idea so he opts for just not saying anything.

“I think, bare minimum, you put my number and Foggy’s number in the burner phone,” Karen continues. “And you give us the number for the burner phone as well. I, for one, want a way to contact you if you disappear on us again. We won’t always be lucky enough to track you through Sergeant Mahoney’s arrests.”

It’s… a pretty reasonable plan, actually. And when Matt agrees to the idea fairly readily he knows that it’s probably the best he’s going to get. “I would like to state again, for the record, that I still don’t like the idea of not knowing where you’ll be or what you’re doing at any given time,” Foggy says. “But that’s my problem to work through. Not yours. If you’re both okay with Karen’s plan, then it works for me.”

“Foggy, half the time I don’t even know where I’m going to be patrolling on any given night,” Matt says. There’s frustration in his voice but he’s not shouting, so Foggy is willing to count this as an improvement over their earlier conversations. “I don’t always go out there with a clear plan for taking down a specific person.”

“Which is half the problem! You go out there already injured and not knowing what situations you’ll find yourself in!” Foggy’s own frustration is coming through, because _this_ is the sort of stuff Matt should be thinking about but clearly he isn’t! Foggy is the one who has to point it out and then Matt gets that look on his face, where he’s annoyed and trying not to show it, and Foggy hates that look because it usually always means that the conversation is going to take a turn for the worse.

“Foggy, that’s enough!” Karen snaps.

The porch is silent for a few moments as every struggles to keep their emotions in check. There’s no way to completely stop the conversation from getting heated, but Foggy knows that they need to stay as level-headed as possible if they want anything productive to come from this.

“I just think if you go out when you’re already injured, you’ll be setting yourself up for worse injuries that Claire can’t handle,” Foggy says, with a voice so even that it surprises even him. “Or Claire won’t be around to patch you up again and it’ll be beyond what I can fix with some Band-Aids and Neosporin, and you’ll end up back in the hospital again.”

“If the city needs me out there, I can’t just take a night off.”

_This city needs me in that mask, Foggy_.

Foggy isn’t going to cry, not this time, but it’s a damn near thing. “So that’s it, then? Matt Murdock doesn’t give a shit about his own wellbeing. So when you die because you were too damn stubborn to let yourself recover, who do you want invited to your funeral?”

Matt is visibly caught off-guard by the question. He opens his mouth to answer, closes it, doesn’t say anything. Next to Foggy Karen is equally silent, watching the argument between the two friends closely but not interrupting. Not this time, not when Foggy knows that she’s on his side with this.

“That’s not fair,” Matt finally says weakly.

“No, what’s not fair is the fact that Karen and I are going to get a phone call from the morgue one day because you refuse to take care of yourself,” Foggy snaps. “God knows I can’t stop you from doing this, but you don’t have to be so damn _reckless_ about everything either! I can’t-” Foggy’s voice breaks and shit, _no_ , he’s not going to cry about this. “-I can’t lose you, buddy. I can’t go through that.”

Matt’s still wearing his glasses from earlier in the day, so it takes Foggy a moment to realize that those are tears sliding down his friend’s face. Matt’s hands are shaking, he’s clearly upset- because _Foggy_ made him upset and shit, Foggy hates being the one to make Matt cry like this.

“I’m not asking you to only go out every other night, or something ridiculous like that,” Foggy says, his voice much gentler but he’s struggling to hold back tears of his own now and it’s hard to get the words out. “Just… One night a week. That’s all I’m asking. If you’re too hurt, don’t go out. Or if you go out and nothing’s happening, come back early and get a decent amount of sleep. Just take care of yourself, for once in your life. Please.”

Matt nods jerkily, looking like he’s trying to use all of his ninja self-control to stop himself from crying even more. “Okay,” he says, voice rough and yeah, he’s definitely still crying. “I’ll try. I can promise you that.”

It’s not even close to being enough for Foggy but he knows it’s all he’s going to get tonight so he nods. “Okay. I just nodded. And now I’m going over there and giving you a hug, don’t even try to stop me Murdock, you owe me one.”

Matt laughs, trying to surreptitiously wipe his eyes before Foggy reaches him, but it’s a futile effort. Foggy envelopes him a huge bear hug and Matt tucks his face into the crook of Foggy’s neck, and they might not be completely okay yet but this is a good enough start for tonight.

“Karen, get your butt over here, you’re part of this now too,” Foggy mock-orders, and Karen laughs but joins the group hug anyway.

If this is the best Foggy can do during their mini-vacation, then he doesn’t think he’s done too poorly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering about the timeline of this story, I've set it sometime during late fall/early winter but before the holiday season. In _Daredevil_ we see everyone bundled up for the cold (especially in the last episode during the funeral) but we never actually see any snow/ice/slush, so I assume the show ends during mid- to late-fall. 
> 
> If I'm wrong on this point... Well, just suspend disbelief for this chapter.
> 
> Also, I will be posting the final chapter tomorrow morning instead of Tuesday, as I'll be going away after that and won't have internet access for a few days.

Karen wakes up last the next morning- actually _wakes up_ last, because for the first time in weeks she feels like she actually got a decent amount of sleep. She knows better than to think that this means her problems are magically cured, that she’ll never have another nightmare again or want to lose herself at the bottom of a bottle of alcohol, but she can’t deny that she feels lighter, somehow, as she makes her way downstairs that morning. Maybe it really is just the good night of sleep that she got, but there’s a part of her that thinks that maybe, just maybe, telling Matt and Foggy her secret might have actually done her some good.

The downstairs smells faintly like coffee, and Karen is amused to see that someone- probably Foggy, let’s be honest here- managed to figure out the hi-tech coffee maker and brewed a pot when they got up. There’s a mug waiting for her on the counter so she pours herself a cup and follows the faint sounds of conversation out into the living room.

The room smells faintly of smoke, the source of which is a large fire crackling in the old brick fireplace. Karen has no idea where Matt or Foggy found logs for a fire but it warms up the room, makes it cozy and comfortable and reminds her of holidays with her family, many years ago. Foggy and Matt are laughing at some joke she missed, and it’s actually Matt who notices her first- a subtle turn of his head, as if trying to hear something better, before he says, “Good morning, Karen. You seem to have slept better last night.”

“I still don’t know how you do that,” she says with a fond shake of her head. She takes a seat on the couch next to Foggy, Matt having claimed the corner chair again. “And you two look like you… also slept well.”

She chooses her words carefully, afraid that this peace is tentative and that one wrong word would send them spiraling back to where they were yesterday. If the discussion last night was even a tenth as bad as what happened when Foggy found out Matt’s secret, she thinks she can understand why they had the fall-out that they did. And Karen doesn’t want to end up back there, doesn’t want the three of them torn apart like that ever again.

But Matt laughs, and Foggy is still smiling, and that knot of fear in Karen’s chest releases a little. “Yeah, we’re all definitely doing better this morning,” Foggy says cheerfully. “If you want your day to stay positive, don’t drink the coffee. I tried my best, but not even my magic coffee-making hands can make those coffee grounds you buy taste good.”

Karen laughs and kicks him. “Maybe if you had more money in the coffee budget, I could actually buy the nicer stuff!”

“I don’t think it tastes that bad,” Matt chimes in, all cheerful innocence as if he’s not purposefully fueling their argument. But Karen has seen him use this same wide-eyed tactic to goad Foggy on more than one occasion to be fooled by it.

Karen would guess that Foggy isn’t fueled either, given the way he smiles almost unconsciously at Matt’s words, but that doesn’t stop him from exclaiming, “Traitor! You’re supposed to have my back on this! How are your super taste buds not offended by this vile beverage?”

“First of all, you have to stop putting _super_ in front of anything I am capable of doing,” Matt says. “And secondly, if you drink it fast enough it scalds your taste buds so I don’t really taste anything.”

“That’s hardly the same as actually liking it, though,” Karen says, barely smothering her giggle.

 _God_ , she had missed this between them.

“Well technically I never said that I liked the coffee,” Matt points out, hiding a smile of his own. “And Foggy, if you throw something at me again I’m throwing it back and you _know_ I’ll actually hit you with it.”

Foggy mutters a quiet curse and sets the coaster he had picked up back down on the end table.

“Do I want to know?” Karen asks with more than a little confusion.

“Foggy thinks it’s amusing to test my senses by throwing things at me,” Matt explains. “He’s annoyed that I’ve caught everything, so now every time he thinks I’m not paying attention his heart starts racing a little from the excitement.”

“That’s cheating!”

“If I couldn’t do that you’d just be throwing things at a regular blind man, which I’m pretty sure is a dick move,” Matt points out, to Foggy’s obvious annoyance.

“You know, I could always just tell Karen about your little freak-out this morning,” Foggy threatens. “That’d knock you down a peg or two.”

That makes Karen sit up, her heart racing slightly at the possibility that everything was not this peaceful earlier in the day. “Wait, what? What happened?”

“Nothing like that,” Matt assures her. “The rain from last night froze and everything outside is covered in ice. It’s just a little… disorienting.”

“Disorienting, how?” Karen asks, curious. Matt’s abilities still take her by surprise sometimes, but she’s always eager to hear more about them.

“Sound bounces differently off smooth surfaces, like ice or glass,” Matt explains. “And there’s a lot of sound- the ice cracking as it melts, or trees groaning and snapping under the weight of it. And that noise echoes off the ice, making it hard to pinpoint where things exactly are. It’s like… like the edges of everything keep shifting. Makes me sick if I try to focus on it for too long.”

“So this idiot gave himself a killer headache this morning, then got frustrated because something got the best of him, and stormed off to meditate for an hour while I tried to figure out that futuristic coffee maker in the kitchen,” Foggy adds. “And then I told him that I was dragging him outside later anyway because we have been cooped up in this house ever since we got here, and he got moody all over again.”

“And then he started throwing things at me,” Matt says dryly. “Like you do when you’re friends with a blind guy.”

“When your blind friend is _Matt Murdock_ , that’s exactly what you do!”

Karen watches the two of them bicker back and forth for several more minutes, torn between outright amusement at how ridiculous they were being and honest amazement at how normal they were acting. Less than twelve hours earlier they had both been crying, working through issues that at one point Karen knows they never expected to work through. Less than 24-hours earlier, they had found out her secret and no amount of support from friends is enough to completely wash her hands clean.

How can they be sitting here, laughing and joking and acting like everything is back to normal, when part of Karen still feels bitter and hollow inside?

She listens to Foggy and Matt continue their banter with some detachment. Matt had a bad start to his morning, and he moved past it. She had a great start to her morning, and now the longer she listens to the two of them the angrier she gets. It isn’t fair, that they can act like everything is fine and like nothing happened. It isn’t _fair_ -

Karen doesn’t realize that she’s stood up until the room falls silent, Foggy looking at her and Matt- well, Matt looking like he’s doing his weird sense thing. And that’s not okay either, because where does he get off looking at her like he has her all figured out when Karen doesn’t know _shit_ about how she’s feeling at the moment?

“Everything okay, Karen?” Foggy asks, in that carefully neutral voice that grates on her nerves because she knows that Foggy must think she’s falling to pieces, but she isn’t. She can’t. She held it together when she was still keeping this a secret, and it’s supposed to be easier now that her friends know as well.

Isn’t it?

“Yeah, of course,” she says immediately. “I just…” And she flounders, scrambling to come up with an excuse before too much time passes and it becomes suspicious. “…thought that it’s about time we headed outside! Get out of the house for a bit, take a walk or something. Like you said.”

“It’s still early. Most of the ice probably hasn’t melted yet,” Matt points out.

“But if another storm rolls through, we might be stuck in here until tomorrow afternoon.” Foggy shrugs. “I’m game for venturing out into the Great Outdoors, while we still can.”

Karen breathes a small sigh of relief as she grabs her coat. She was fine. Everything was fine. Getting out of the house for a bit, even just to take another walk around the neighborhood, would probably do her some good. Help distract her, clear her mind for a bit.

Foggy is the first to get bundled up, in his heavy winter coat and an old beanie that looks like it has definitely seen better days, and he throws the front door wide open with a burst of enthusiasm. “Whoa! Okay, maybe we should rethink this plan.”

Outside, snow is beginning to fall, heavy flakes that are already beginning to stick to the trees and the road. “Oh, it’s… it’s beautiful,” Karen breathes.

“Snow?” Matt asks.

Karen nods distractedly. “Oh, yeah, sorry it’s snowing,” she adds quickly. “There’s not a lot on the ground, but it’s coming down pretty hard. We might actually be stuck here until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Isn’t it a little early in the season for snow?”

“Who cares?” Foggy says. His enthusiasm, which had seemed a little bit forced before, is completely genuine now. “Snowball fights! And- and other snow things! Matt, it’ll be like college all over again!”

“Do you mean you getting hit with ice-covered snowball on the quad and getting that cut on your forehead that bled so much you thought you were dying?” Matt asks as he wraps his scarf around his neck.

Karen laughs. “I wish I knew you two back then,” she says fondly. It’s not the first time she’s felt like she’s missed out on something beautiful whenever Foggy and Matt talk about their college days, and it’s not the first time that the thought is tinged with bitterness.

She’s friends with them now. She tells herself that that’s much more important.

“Eh, you probably would’ve hated Matt in the winter,” Foggy tells her. “He turns into a big baby when it gets cold. Used to hole up in the dorm room and refuse to leave for any reason except class when it snowed.”

The three of them trudge outside, Matt carefully holding onto Foggy’s arm as they step down the front steps. The roads themselves had been cleared of most of the ice at some point but their steps are still careful, cautious as they walk down the street.

“So Matt, what are your thoughts on this lovely little collection of houses?” Foggy asks, motioning around them. “Are you enjoying the trees? And more trees? And a whole freaking _forest_ of trees?”

“You have something against trees, Foggy?” Karen asks with a giggle.

“I have a problem with houses in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do,” Foggy counters. “Seriously, we did not plan this well! Traveling north just in time to get snowed in, and without a single braille card game to play to pass the time!”

“That’s because the plan was for us to _talk_ ,” Karen points out. “So. Let’s talk. Matt, you never answered Foggy’s question. What do you think of this place?”

“It’s… nice,” Matt says noncommittally. He keeps turning his head slightly, as if trying to get a better sense of what he’s hearing and sensing. “It’s hard to get a read on things. The snow sort of masks things, dampens sounds and makes everything just seem empty.”

“Is that better or worse than the ice?” Karen asks.

Matt shrugs. “Better, I guess. Less disorienting, but it’s still hard to get around sometimes. Especially when the snow is still fresh like this.”

“So wait, is you being a bitter grump whenever it’s cold because of your super-senses too?” Foggy asks incredulously.

“They aren’t _super_ …” Matt sighs, and Karen has to stifle a laugh. That’s an argument that Matt isn’t going to be winning anytime soon. “Whatever. Yes, the cold bothers my skin a lot. You know that, you saw how dry and itchy I always was during college.”

“Everyone gets dry skin during the winter, Matt! How was I supposed to know that yours was any worse than-”

A loud _crack_ interrupts their conversation, the snow doing nothing to stop the noise from echoing around them and Karen stumbles, heart racing wildly because that was a gunshot, that had to be a gunshot-

_-echoing in the warehouse and Wesley looks honestly shocked, but the shot wasn’t fatal he can still move, he could still tell Fisk, he could still…_

_Another shot, and another, and another, and she empties the gun into his chest, not even realizing what she’s done until she can’t fire another bullet, the weight of the gun heavy in her hands-_

-and Karen can’t drop the gun, can’t leave it at the scene, her hand clenched so tightly to stop herself from dropping it that it takes Foggy prying her fist open for her to realize that there’s nothing there. She glances down at her feet anyway, half-expecting to see a gun lying there, but there’s nothing except ice and snow and the gravel dug up by the snow plows.

It takes her a minute longer to realize that she’s being led away, Matt on one side of her and Foggy on the other, and that Foggy has apparently been talking to her for god knows how long.

“-okay, everything is going to be okay. We’re just gonna get you back to the house, and everything is going to be fine…”

Karen tries to cling to his voice but it keeps fading in and out, like the world is going fuzzy around the edges. She doesn’t remember walking into the house, but somehow they’re inside and she’s losing the fight with the buttons on her coat and Foggy pushes her hands away to just take care of it herself. They end up back out on the porch, but Karen doesn’t realize they moved at all until Matt is pushing a mug into her hands and she’s hissing at the heat of it burning her palms.

She clings to that burn, to the contrast of the cold air making her shiver, to Foggy’s voice that’s _still_ offering her quiet comforts and reassurances, until the fuzziness in her mind fades away and her heart stops racing and she feels like she can actually breathe again. Someone draped a blanket around her shoulders at one point- was it Foggy? Or was it Matt, after giving her the warm mug? She can’t remember and that frightens her, these small gaps in her memory from hearing the crack ( _gunshot_ ) outside and ending up back here.

She wraps the blanket tighter around herself, uses it to keep her grounded in this moment so she doesn’t slip away again.

“You back with us?” Matt asks gently, as if he doesn’t already know. Maybe he doesn’t. Karen should answer him.

“Y-yeah. Think so,” she says. Talking requires a lot of energy. Why is she so _tired_ all of a sudden?

“Are you okay moving back into the living room?” Matt asks. “Or do you want to stay where it’s a little colder?”

The cold is helping her focus, but it’s also making her shiver and the desire to be warm wins out in the end. “Move,” she finally says. “Keep talking though?”

“I don’t think Foggy ever really shuts up,” Matt jokes as Foggy reaches a hand out to help her stand up.

“He’s right. Did I ever tell you about the time he caught me talking in my sleep in college?” It’s a rhetorical question; Foggy is already off telling the story before she could even think of formulating an answer.

The three of them shuffle slowly back into the living room, which is still comfortably warm from the fire from earlier. Karen keeps the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders though, as if using it as a shield, and when she sits down in the middle of the couch Matt and Foggy both sit down next to her this time.

“You should drink that,” Matt says, tapping the side of her mug gently. “It’ll help.”

Karen nods and takes a small sip of the drink- tea, peppermint tea with a bit of sugar, and now that she tastes it she can _smell_ it as well, covering the stench of gun-smoke in the air-

No. That’s not real. The tea is real, and the blanket is real, and Foggy still rambling and Matt’s knee brushing against hers- that’s all real.

“What was that noise?” she asks softly, trying to piece together what happened.

“A tree snapping from the ice,” Foggy tells her. “You heard it and… kinda freaked out on us.”

Karen’s grip on the mug tightens. She remembers that part. “I thought… It sounded like…”

“A gunshot,” Matt finishes for her, when she can’t get the words out. “Karen, has this happened before?”

“Once or twice.” More times than she can count because the city is full of loud, sudden noises and it’s not always this bad but it’s always a little bit rough. It’s why she started spending so much more time in the office. Her apartment still feels like something out of a bad dream. The office, at least, is real.

Foggy and Matt exchange a glance over her head and Karen knows what that means, knows that they’ve been talking about her behind her back. “You thought this would happen.”

“We suspected,” Matt says. “After your… reaction, when I found out. We thought this might happen, yeah.”

“Karen, we care about you. And we worry about you,” Foggy continues. “I mean, I worry about everyone and Matt feels guilty about everything, but it’s basically the same thing. Like you said last night, you’re stuck with us. And we want to make sure that you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be okay.”

“We know you will, but right now you’re not exactly there,” Foggy says. “Matt and I, we’ve been dealing with his issues for years. But yours might be a little outside our league. And we don’t want to make things worse by doing the wrong thing.”

“I don’t think this can get any worse,” she tries joking, but Matt and Foggy aren’t laughing and she burrows further under the blanket, trying to get away from their worried looks. “I can’t afford a therapist,” she admits quietly. “And I don’t- I don’t know if I’d be comfortable. Talking to anyone else, I mean.”

“I can ask Claire if she knows anyone who offers discounts for low-income families,” Matt offers. “And we’ll chip in to help pay for it, if you need us to.”

“And no one says you have to spill your guts during the first session, or even to the first person you talk to,” Foggy says. “You can take things at your own pace, wait until you find someone you’re comfortable with. But we really, really think you should consider it. It would probably help, more than we can.”

Karen doesn’t want to see a therapist, because seeing a therapist would mean admitting that Matt and Foggy are right- that she isn’t okay, that she can’t handle this on her own, that she actually needs professional help. Karen doesn’t want them to be right, but more than that she doesn’t want another day like this. She doesn’t want any more nightmares. She doesn’t want to say _I’m fine_ and have it be a lie.

“I’ll look into it. When we get back,” Karen promises. “And that’s not- that’s not a lie, either. I’ll do it. I promise.”

She doesn’t miss Foggy’s glance at Matt, and Matt’s subtle nod in response, but she doesn’t call them out on it. Given how long she lied to them about this, she can’t exactly blame them for being suspicious.

“And that’s all we’re asking,” Matt says smoothly, as if he wasn’t just acting as a human lie detector. As if he doesn’t need an entire army of therapists himself.

Karen pushes down her annoyance, and takes another sip of her tea. _Think positive_ , she tells herself. _Don’t break down again_. _You can do this_.

The sooner their attention can shift away from her, the sooner she can build her walls back up and push her trauma back down. So she takes a deep breath, fakes the most casual tone she can manage, and purposefully changes the conversation. “So, anyone got plans for things to do during a snow storm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was very important to me to write this chapter for Karen. The way she acts in the last few episodes, and the way Foggy and Matt talk about her, very much leads me to believe that she is experiencing on-going trauma from killing Wesley. I am not an expert on this sort of thing by any stretch, but I tried to do some research to make her reactions as believable as possible. It was also important for me to acknowledge that Karen's issues are better dealt with by a professional than just her friends- mostly because, as I wrote in the last chapter, there's only so much Foggy himself can take on and Matt is dealing with his own problems as well, and I think they both know that they aren't equipped to take on Karen's problems as well at the moment.
> 
> If anything about how I've written Karen seems glaringly wrong, please let me know. Like I said I'm not an expert on things like this, and I'll do my best to rewrite parts if I got anything extremely wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

The snow storm doesn’t end up being as bad as they thought it would. Matt listens to the snow fall well into the early evening (or rather, listens to the sounds outside slowly become more and more muffled by the steadily-growing blanket of snow), but by the time the three of them are eating dinner Foggy is cheerfully announcing that, “Hey, look! It’s stopped snowing! I mean not you Matt, but- hey wait, can you hear it snowing? What does that sound like?” And Matt had been dragged into yet another conversation about how his senses work.

Matt doesn’t mind as much as he did a few days ago, which probably means that this trip away from the city was a good idea. He’s never admitting that to Foggy, though. He’ll mention the abundance of ice and snow messing with his senses for _years_ before he admits that leaving the city was a good idea because he doesn’t want his friends to start thinking they can drag him away any time they want. Hell’s Kitchen still needs him, and the longer they spend away the itchier Matt gets to go home and bash in a few skulls.

He needs to get his stitches removed first, though. Which means another trip to the hospital if Claire isn’t back yet- or maybe this is something he can bribe Foggy into doing. Tell him it’s a new bonding technique to help him become desensitized to all of this.

Yeah, even he knows that’s not going to work.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because the point is that he’s not in New York and they did manage to avoid actually getting snowed in, and none of them want to stay in the house a second longer.

The little town they drove though on their way to the house when they first arrived is just that- little. But the sidewalks are clear and it’s nice being able to just get outside and move around, so none of them are really complaining. Karen is still a little jumpy, as if she’s expecting another tree branch to break off next to them, but Matt thinks she’ll be alright once they get back and she can start talking to someone.

He thinks they’ll actually all be alright, in the end.

“Matt. Oh my god, Matt, you’ve gotta come see this,” Foggy says excitedly, barely able to contain his amusement. “It costs more than my rent does for the month and it’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen!”

They’re in one of the stores in town, a little boutique that apparently had some fairly questionable fashion items in it. Foggy places Matt’s hands on what feels like leather, but as he moves his hands over the garment- “What the hell?”

“It’s a leather jacket with a knitted vest sewn onto the torso,” Foggy says gleefully. “And it’s gonna be your Christmas present this year! Karen and I both agreed, we’re going halves on it…”

“No. Foggy, no!” Matt says, but he’s laughing too hard to actually protest. “This feels like it looks terrible. Are those- are those pom-poms on the collar?”

“Yes, my friend, they are!” Foggy tells him, with way too much excitement about something that Matt is pretty sure wouldn’t even sell in a charity thrift shop. “Perfect for keeping your neck warm on a chilly winter day, have to protect your delicate skin and all…”

“If you buy this for me, I will set it on fire,” Matt tells him with complete seriousness. “I will go up to my roof and have a bonfire on Christmas evening and roast marshmallow over the charred remains of this jacket.”

“You’re no fun. Karen! He’s no fun!” Foggy calls out to Karen, who had disappeared into another aisle. Matt could still hear her giggling at their very-loud conversation.

“I have a better idea of how you can spend your money,” Matt tells Foggy. “Coffee shop, two buildings down. With homemade chocolate.”

He smelled the café when they were leaving the last store and coming into this one, knows they would’ve reached it eventually but he’s certainly not above using that information to get away from this jacket that’s assaulting his senses. He’s thankful he can’t see it, having to touch the thing was bad enough.

“See, this is the sort of thing you should be using your senses for all the time! Karen! We’re moving out! Time for a coffee break!” Foggy yells across the store. The cashier must be so thrilled that they’re leaving.

The coffee shop is warm inside, a fact which Matt appreciates even as it takes him a moment to adjust to the new onslaught of stimuli. The smells of coffee and chocolate and various flavored syrups, the screech of one of the machines steaming milk that’s loud enough to make his ears hurt, the chatter of the baristas as they work, walking over squeaky floorboards and rubber mats that squelch against the floor-

“Matt, you want any chocolate?” Foggy asks. Matt clings to his voice, to the familiarity of his heartbeat, uses that to drown out everything else for the time being. “Their truffles look _delicious_ …”

“You pick something,” he says. “My stomach is in your hands. Karen, what drinks do they have?”

“A little of everything,” Karen says. “You want me to read you the whole menu, or…?”

“Any specials?” he asks. Specials are usually safe. They’re supposed to taste the best, so they’re usually made with a little more care.

“There’s a vanilla chai latte,” she says.

“No vanilla,” is his immediate reply. “I, uh. Don’t care for it too much.”

He can feel Foggy turn to look at him, wonders how long it’s going to take before his friend corners him to ask whatever question he knows Foggy wants to ask.

“There’s a hot apple cider drink then?” Karen suggests. “Apple cider, cinnamon, caramel…”

“That sounds perfect.” Not a lot of additives, so hopefully not a lot of strange chemical flavors. He digs his wallet out and passes her a five-dollar bill, the corner folded in a specific pattern so he knows which bill he’s grabbing. “Would you mind ordering it for me? Medium, please. I’m just going to wait outside, it’s a little…” Overwhelming. “…crowded in here, for me.”

He’s never really realized the advantages of having his friends know his secrets until he hears Karen say, “Of course, Matt. Go grab a table, we’ll join you out there,” and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she knows the real reason why he makes a hasty exit. It’s freeing, it’s relieving, it’s a weight off Matt’s shoulders that he never knew was there until it’s suddenly not.

It’s still bitterly cold outside, but Foggy forced a pair of gloves onto him this morning and he’s got his scarf so the temperature isn’t playing havoc with his skin. Not yet, anyway, and even if it was he’s not sure he’d really care. Today is a rare good day, and Matt’s going to savor every minute of it.

It doesn’t take Karen and Foggy long to return. He can smell Karen’s caramel latte, Foggy’s mocha, the chocolate that both of them bought packaged together in one joint bag. “There’s a bookstore next door,” Karen says as she sets the chocolate bag down on the table. “Either of you two want to take a look?”

“I’ll pass this time,” Foggy says.

“Let me know if they have any books in braille, and I’ll check it out,” Matt adds. They probably won’t, but you never know.

Matt hears her walking down the street, three steps up and a heavy door being pulled open. Next to him, there’s a hitch in Foggy’s breathing. Matt should’ve known he wouldn’t wait long before asking.

“Vanilla, Matt? Your super taste buds don’t like _vanilla_ , of all things?”

Matt is pretty sure that Foggy is only adding “super” before everything because of how often Matt tells him not to. His new strategy is to not ask Foggy to stop and hope his friend grows bored with the lack of reaction; he’s not convinced it’ll actually work, but it’s worth a try. “It’s not a taste thing,” he says, picking at the cardboard sleeve on his drink. “It’s just… just a preference.”

Foggy doesn’t ask for details, willing to accept that statement at face value, but this is the first time that Matt can talk about this part of his childhood with complete honesty and he finds that, to his surprise, he wants to share it with Foggy.

“After my dad died and I was sent to the orphanage, I sort of… fell apart a little,” Matt says quietly. “Everything I could sense, everything I could hear and smell and feel, just overwhelmed me. The nuns didn’t know what to do so they found Stick- or well, Stick found me I guess. They thought they were paying him to teach me how to deal with being blind. He took the money and made me a warrior.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything but Matt knows he’s listening, can hear the way his heart speeds up a little at the mention of Matt’s mentor.

“The first time I went out with Stick, he bought me ice cream. A vanilla cone. It was the first time anyone bought me ice cream since my dad died, but he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. It was a test, everything was a test with him.” Matt can still taste the vanilla, can still remember how his brain catalogued everything Stick pointed out about the flavors that he had missed at first. He memorized everything Stick said because he wanted to make Stick proud, like he would make his dad proud. Which was exactly his problem, in the end.

“I kept the wrapper off the cone. Made it into a bracelet for him, to show how much he meant to me, you know?” Matt continues, as if he can’t hear Foggy’s heart continue to race. As if he can look down at the table and avoid all of the reactions he can pick up from his friend. He hates having his abilities in moments like this. “But he wanted a soldier, not a son. So he left, and after that vanilla always made me think of…” He forced a smile. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

“Jesus, Matt,” Foggy says quietly. “That’s- please tell me that you know how fucked up that is.”

Matt hums and thinks about it for a moment, choosing his words carefully before saying, “I do know. For the most part. Until he showed up during everything with Fisk I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but seeing him after twenty years changed that. It’s- it’s still complicated, for me. I think it always will be. But I know that that sort of childhood isn’t normal, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Well that’s something, at least,” Foggy mutters.

Karen is making her way back to them. Her heartbeat is steadily becoming as familiar to Matt as Foggy’s already is, making it easy to pick her out from a crowd. Matt likes that, likes the reminder that he has people in his life who care about him. Who are actually sticking around, for once in his life.

“The bookstore is kind of shit,” Karen says as she pulls out a chair and takes a seat. “Clearly my time would’ve been better off spent here, because you two look like you had a conversation that I should’ve been here for.”

Matt bites down on that all-too-familiar flare of guilt as Foggy says, “Just talking about Matt’s abandonment issues. If we ever run into Stick, I’m gonna need your help killing him and hiding the body, okay?”

“Stick? The ninja that trained Matt?” Karen asks skeptically. “Foggy, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think we’re gonna be a match for him.”

Foggy shrugs; Matt can hear the shift of his coat as he makes the motion. “You never know. He’s old. If we startle him, he might have a heart attack and just die on us.”

Both Karen and Matt laugh at that, and some of the tension eases away from the group. “Seriously though, are you okay Matt?” Karen asks, voice full of gentle concern.

“I’m fine,” Matt assures her. And he is. It’s been a long time coming, but he actually is okay with this. Feeling like he owes her _something_ for missing the conversation he had with Foggy he asks, “Did I ever tell you about the nuns teaching me to play the pipe organ in our church?”

XXXXX

Matt sits on the edge of the bed, turning his burner phone over in his hands. He had called Claire when he got out of the hospital so she wouldn’t see the missed call from him from when he was injured and worry. They had spoken for a minute, before Foggy arrived to help him pack for their impromptu trip and the phone got shoved in his pocket and forgotten about. And now Foggy and Karen want the number to the phone and he doesn’t know what to do.

A part of him, a very large part of him, doesn’t want to give it to them. Claire has the number saved only so she knows when it’s him calling, and he remembers all too well how having that number saved her life when she was taken by the Russians. But giving this number to Karen and Foggy is acknowledging that they’re irrevocably tied up in this, and despite the many conversations over the last few days Matt isn’t sure if he’s ready to admit that fact.

He thinks about that hideous coat that Foggy found in the store today and his laughter when he made Matt feel it. He thinks about how Karen couldn’t stop giggling, even from the other side of the shop. It’s such a stark contrast to those last few days of the Fisk case, when he wasn’t speaking to Foggy and avoided the office- and Karen- by extension. He thinks, _I never want that to happen again_ , and if he has to give up the burner phone number to make sure his friends stick by his side, he thinks that might be a fair trade-off after all.

“Matt! Was wondering when you’d finally resurface again,” Foggy calls out cheerfully as Matt makes his way downstairs, still holding the burner phone in his hand. “Come over here, Karen and I have something for you to feel up.”

“Great, I have something for you too,” Matt says, tossing the burner phone at Foggy.

He hears Foggy fumble with it, picks up the slight hitch in his breathing when he realizes what it is. “Seriously? You’re actually okay with that plan?”

Matt shrugs. “I told you I’d give you the number, didn’t I? Put it in your phone under ‘Mike’. I think that’s what Claire has it as in her phone, and this way in case the police…” He’s not going to think about that right now. “Anyway, it’s probably a good idea for you to all use the same alias.”

“Mike?” Karen repeats.

“It’s a long story,” Matt says. One which they don’t need to hear right now. Or ever. “Put your numbers in the speed-dial too. And what exactly am I supposed to be feeling?”

“This,” Foggy says, passing a piece of paper over to him.

Matt can tell a lot about the paper- legal size, writing on it in ballpoint pen, both Foggy and Karen had been handling it earlier- but he can’t read what’s on it. “Is this like the napkin? Are we getting another sign?”

“No sign,” Foggy says. Matt can hear the tiny _clicks_ as he inputs his number into the burner phone, and the pause right before he adds, “Well I mean, we could turn it into a sign if you want…”

“We don’t have the money for a sign,” Karen says, sounding like they’ve had this conversation before. Matt wonders if he should have been listening in on this conversation while he was upstairs, but he was trying not to invade his friends’ privacy more than necessary. “It’s just a list, Matt.”

“A list of what?”

“The rules we came up with last night,” Foggy explains. “You know… Rule number one, Matt Murdock has to remember that his friends really do care. Rule number two, no more fighting except over who gets the last egg roll when we order Chinese food. Rule number three, Matt tells us when something we’re teasing him about is related to his superpowers…”

“I don’t remember that rule coming up last night,” Matt says. He’s not sure if the list is supposed to be serious or a joke, and he’s a little afraid of saying the wrong thing before he manages to work that particular detail out.

“No, that’s a new addition,” Foggy tells him. “But an important one, I think. I’m kind of tired of feeling like an ass every time I poke fun at something weird you do, and you turn around and tell me that it’s because of your abilities. Like with the sheets, and you being grumpy in winter, and whatever. So rule three: you tell us when that happens, and we cut it out.”

“I don’t mind the jokes,” Matt says honestly. He knows that he’s not like most people, but he appreciates Foggy’s effort to treat him as normally as possible. “But sure, I can tell you what’s because of my abilities and what isn’t. Although fair warning, that’s quite a lot of things.”

“Matt, do you want us to take Claire’s number too?” Karen interrupts.

Matt thinks about it for a second, weighs Claire’s possible annoyance at her number being given out against Foggy and Karen being able to contact her in case he goes missing again. “Might as well,” he finally says. “Rule number four, though. No contacting Claire except in emergencies.”

“As if I _would_ ,” Foggy mutters. “Is rule five going to be, don’t call her Hottie McBurnerPhone?”

“Please no,” Karen says. “I haven’t even met her, but I want to see the look on her face when you call her that.”

Matt can’t help but laugh at that. He could almost imagine the exact tone Claire would get in her voice if she ever found out about Foggy’s nickname for her. “No, rule number five is that Foggy isn’t allowed to call my abilities super powers or super senses or any variations thereof,” he teases.

“What? No, wait, that’s not fair-”

“I think that’s perfectly fair,” Karen says firmly. “We all have equal rule-making power in this, after all.”

“That’s good to know. But it would also help if I knew what the list was for,” Matt points out, waving the paper that he’s still holding in his hand. “We aren’t framing this for the office or anything, are we?”

“And what if we are?” Karen asks, plucking the list from his hand. He can hear her uncap a pen and then the familiar scratching as she starts to write, probably adding his mostly-joking rules that he just came up with. “Foggy and I just think that it might be a good idea to have a reminder of the last few days, you know?”

“I thought you were buying that coat in town, isn’t that reminder enough?” Matt jokes.

“Yeah well, we can’t wave the coat in your face as proof that you agreed to work on your issues,” Foggy says. “That we _all_ agreed to work on our issues.”

Matt wants to make another joke, but he knows that Foggy and Karen are being serious about this. More or less, anyway. And really, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep something like this around, if only because he knows it would make Foggy feel better if he’s able to throw this in his face after particularly difficult days. “If you type this up when we get back, print out a copy in braille,” he says. “So I can reference it whenever Foggy calls me a superhero to get him to stop.”

And also so he can read it on his own, when Foggy and Karen aren’t around to throw it in his face, but he doesn’t say that aloud.

Matt knows that something like this can’t solve all their problems, knows that if he’s being honest Karen probably isn’t the only one who needs to see a therapist even if she’s really the only one who can. You can’t leave the city for less than a week and go home expecting everything to be perfect. But it’s a start, it’s more than they had before. And Matt’s going to take any reminders of that fact where he can find them, from the two new numbers in his burner phone to a list of ridiculous rules that were all made up on the fly.

Maybe they aren’t completely okay, not yet. But they’re getting there, one coping mechanism at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [That coat does exist, in all it's hideous glory.](http://holycrapyarnandstuff.tumblr.com/post/25951201852)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, and left kudos/comments! They all mean a lot to me, and I really appreciated your support and kind words as I was writing this :) 
> 
> I have (very) tentative plans for a third story in this series, but as I haven't even started it yet I can't tell you when it'll be finished. I'd suggest subscribing to the series if you want to be alerted when the new story is posted.
> 
> Thanks again, everyone!


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